


To Hold Back All My Dark

by begforyourmercy



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, Kylux - Freeform, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Rape/Non-con Elements, Star Wars: The Force Awakens Spoilers, kylux slow burn, non-TLJ compliant, very slow burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-16
Updated: 2018-11-29
Packaged: 2019-06-28 03:07:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 10
Words: 40,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15698883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/begforyourmercy/pseuds/begforyourmercy
Summary: General Armitage Hux has officially lost it all.As Starkiller Base counts down her final minutes, Supreme Leader Snoke strands him on the surface, as well as his defeated apprentice, Kylo Ren. In an unlikely turn of events, the two men manage to escape - but lost, stripped of rank and power, and with no one to turn to for help but each other. Now fugitives of the First Order, Ren and Hux are forced to wander the galaxy, running from First Order and Resistance fleets alike. They stick together, but become husks of their former selves - nobodies against the backdrop of a galactic struggle they no longer hold the reins to.After a while, the running becomes second nature. But there is only one little thing holding their fragile plan together: Kylo Ren must not use the Force, lest Snoke sense the disturbance and kill them instantly.Together, they struggle to find a life amongst the normalcy and domesticity that the galaxy has to offer, and discover that they may not mind being nobodies at all - as long as they're nobodies together.





	1. Chapter One

 

From afar, perhaps, it might have been beautiful.

 

The demise of Starkiller: blinding, erupting, imploding. All light and flames, reminiscent of the birth of a red giant - only this wasn’t birth, this was death. Magnificent death, eating it up from the inside, splitting apart at the seams like an overripe fruit in summer heat. Yes, it looked hauntingly beautiful from far away.

 

But from up close, Hux didn’t think it was very beautiful at all.

 

It had been bad enough to have to see it from a distance. Standing atop the bridge of the _Finalizer_ , shouting orders at every officer and lieutenant who even dared to breathe in his general direction. They were failing him, all of them - too incompetent to counterattack, strategize, or even push a pfassking button or flick a lever. Nothing they did was ever right, but today, it was even more catastrophic. There was no button or lever that would help fix the planet; he knew that, but he still kept shouting orders as if the sheer volume of his voice would right the situation. But it didn’t. Starkiller died, gloriously, right before his very eyes. His life’s work, diminished to rubble and ash.

 

Yes, it had been bad enough already to watch it happen from the protection of the _Finalizer_. It was made infinitely worse when Snoke sent him down to see it firsthand.

 

Hux could hardly stand to face him. Alone, in that dark, cold holochamber, too afraid to look up and see that twisted face bearing down on him in utter disappointment. He’d failed him - he’d failed the entire First Order and what it stood for. Most of all, he’d failed _himself_ \- and how, exactly, could he bear to live with himself after he couldn’t stop a simple scavenger brat and her rag-tag crew from toppling his whole empire? He couldn’t. The blame wasn’t all his own to bear, but he would grin and bear it anyway.

 

When he finally spoke, Snoke’s voice was soft. _Go get Kylo Ren,_ he’d practically whispered. _Bring him to me. That should be simple enough a task for you, General._

 

Hux would rather his insides be torn out than be spoken to so gently, so condescendingly. He wanted to scream; wanted death to rip through his nerve-wracked frame. But he stayed silent; nodded obediently. A model soldier, until the very end.

 

He was ushered to a small shuttle, along with a tiny gaggle of stormtroopers Ren was wounded, he’d been told. Sliced open by the scavenger girl, left to bleed out onto the icy ground. Hux had to find him before he expired - before the whole planet expired. _Simple enough a task,_ Snoke’s voice repeated itself in his mind, _for you, General._

 

From up there, in the empty space above the now-useless planet, Hux could see how one would think this disaster was pleasing to the eye. He personally didn’t think so - not when the very thing he’d spent years and years of precious time perfecting just _died_ \- but he could see how one could find the beauty in it. The skies were red, streaked with dark smudges of smoke as Starkiller’s mechanical workings burned. The long, pulsating cracks of magma fragmented the dismal earth, stark against the fresh snowfall that blanketed the forest terrain. All around, flames danced, tips peaking above the tallest of the trees and climbing higher still. It was like a scene out of those Empire-era, over-dramatic holofilms: vivid, bright, and happening at a horrifyingly slow rate of speed.

 

Even as everything fell apart around him, Hux was not one to show weakness. The stormtroopers, lined up in three pretty rows behind him, could not see the destruction within him; they could not catch a glimpse of the pillars of strength and pride that crumbled more and more with every breath he took. He may have failed fantastically, but he was still General Hux: emotionless, unflappable.

 

Which is why, when he stepped off the shuttle’s landing and onto the quaking earth, he expected them to follow him.

 

They didn’t move.

 

Hux turned on his heel, back to them. “Move out,” he ordered, voice still carrying loudly over the roar of the shuttle’s idling engine, mixed with the distant interjections of Starkiller’s exploding internals. Each boom bypassed Hux’s ears and went straight to his gut; a hit made personal, rubbing and pounding salt into the wound of his mistake. His project, borne of his own design, falling apart under his bootsoles; he’d been standing on it far too long already. “Ren’s around here somewhere. We don’t have long to find him before the planet blows. Move out!”

 

Again, they didn’t move. Their blasters stayed tucked at their sides, helmets gleaming blankly in the artificial lighting of the shuttle. Their armor clinked and thunked together as the planet continued to shake, but no other movement came from the too-silent, mannequin-like troopers. Even Phasma - Hux’s right hand, his confidant, his _friend_ \- did not make to come down off the ship after him.

 

“Well?” Hux snarled, temper shortening with each second that ticked by. “You have orders.”

 

Phasma’s chromed helmet glinted as she bowed her head. “I’m sorry, sir,” she said through her metallic vocoder, normally monotone voice sounding somewhat mournful. “Yes we do.”

 

And then the landing ramp began to retract.

 

Hux started, shocked into inactivity. After a pause that seemed eternal, he jerked into motion, boots coming unstuck from the freezing slush as he charged back to the rapidly-lifting ramp; when he got to it, shouting and cursing and thinking _betrayal, betrayal, betrayal_ , it was too far up to climb back on. The fluorescent light that beamed out of it was fading away, the darkness of Starkiller swallowing him up like a blanket. “Traitors!” he shrieked into the sky, unholstering his blaster from his hip and shooting in vain at the fleeing transport. His shots helped him none; he was suddenly entirely alone.

 

Now he understood why Snoke had not eviscerated him in the holochamber, had not just ordered him shot out of the airlock for his incompetence. He had not punished him there - no, that would have been far too kind. Snoke had led him, unknowingly, to his demise; a sheep led blindly to slaughter. They were leaving him on this crumbling planet - leaving him atop his own fantastic failure - to die. When Starkiller’s heart finally burst, he would be there to burst with it.

 

It was cruel, and inhumane, and undeniably Snoke. Hux wondered why he hadn’t seen it coming as soon as the first X-Wing had appeared in the foggy twilight. Someone had to answer for this crime - and that fate had befallen him. Who better to carry Starkiller’s failure, than the creator itself?

 

Hux stood in the snow, unmoving, for an eternity. The planet creaked under him, but the dread coiling deep in his belly clouded all thoughts or cares about his impending doom. He simply stood his ground, silent, still. His ill fate entirely and wholly accepted.

 

And then the blaster fire began.

 

\---

 

Hux decided to fight, even if there was nothing worth fighting for anymore.

 

Starkiller Base was under heavy attack. After the scavenger and her friends had gone after the oscillator, effectively turning the entire superweapon into a super-sized bomb, the remaining Resistance battalion swarmed around the planet like flies on a dead animal, to celebrate their impending victory as well as rub salt in the wound. Starkiller hadn’t passed yet, but she was on her way; the X-Wings drifted in orbit around her, firing at her soft spots and exposed skin without mercy. Hux felt every blaster bolt and cannon charge like a punch to the gut - it was personal, this attack. Every bit personal.

 

So he raged. As the Resistance gunfire hailed down from the heavens, and the planet itself ruptured from the underworld, Hux let loose on the middle ground somewhere in between. Rebel scum had landed, determined to pillage as much ammunition and supplies from the abandoned base, and to pick off any First Order stragglers that remained. They seemed gleeful at the opportunity to try and take down General Starkiller himself; he steered clear of the Base itself, instead running along the forrested edge to keep from being blasted to bits.

 

He wasn't winning. He was shaken, and shot, and beaten down. But he wasn’t giving up yet.

 

He needed to find Ren. That moody, lumbering oaf was just as much responsible for the fall of his precious Starkiller as the rebels who relentlessly pelted it with blaster fire were. He had let the scavenger girl slip out of his grasp and wreak havoc; he had been weak, and pathetic, just as Hux had expected of him since the moment the girl had become a mere blip on their radar. Though the punishment had befallen Hux, it was really Ren that deserved to have the blame placed on his shoulders.

 

He needed to find Ren. He needed to find Ren, so that he could make him pay.

 

Hux wandered into the woods, clutching a heavily bleeding blaster wound on his side as he limped along. He shivered, slowly growing colder and colder as his body heat escaped him; Starkiller’s skies rained down ash and snowflakes, coating him in a film of white that chilled him to the core.

 

The longer he searched for Ren - the longer he left a bloody trail behind him in the snow, his sanity fleeing him all the same at an alarming rate - the more he rethought his decision for revenge. Ren might be better off than he, and wouldn’t hesitate to take Hux down for good. Or, he might already be dead; Hux would find little to no enjoyment in blasting Ren’s corpse. And, if he were being entirely honest, Hux was tired of all this violence. After the day he’d had, some verbal abuse would suffice.

 

“Perhaps,” he whispered to himself, half mad with exhaustion and pain and a little bit of mania as he trudged through the snow and debris, “Ren can get us off this karking planet.”

 

\---

 

_Ren can save us_ , Hux had thought. He was woozy now, half blind from snowfall, grime, and blood. He’d stumbled and fallen, causing a head wound to seep crimson down his face and run into his eye. Still, he trudged on, too hysterical, and possibly concussed, to give up hope. His brain played the same thought like a holorecord on repeat: _Ren can get us out of here._

 

But as soon as Hux’s blurry eyes found Ren - a big, black pile of rags, lying too still on the debris-strewn ground - he knew there was no hope for his plan.

 

Ren was alone, lying amongst a hilled and thicketed wood. The whole scene was a mess, littered with evidence of a great battle: scorch marks on all the trees, slashed lines that indicated a struggle involving not one but two lightsabers; footpaths in the snow that halted and dragged; and dents in the snowbanks where bodies had collapsed or fallen, but had not stayed for long. The earth was cracking and splitting here as well, so Hux tread carefully, like a rodent atop an icy creek.

 

Hux knelt on the ground next to Ren, overwhelmed with pain and cold and a profound sense of _lost, everything is lost_ that pulsed through his veins. He was bleeding out onto the snow like Ren was - he’d been shot, of that much he was certain; yet he knew not where, and couldn’t really bring himself to care. It didn’t matter, anyway. Either they died first, or the planet died underneath them - neither preferable, both inevitable. It was only a matter of time before one of the possibilities reared its ugly head.

 

_How could I have thought this beautiful_ , he thought mournfully, clutching at the tatters of his greatcoat to attempt to keep the chill from seeping into his bones. _How could I have looked down upon this monstrosity, this catastrophic failure, and thought one could find a pleasant sight in it. All that’s here is death, and destruction, and chaos - not beauty. And I will die among it, pitiable and alone._

 

_Not alone,_ Ren pushed into his mind weakly. He was too weak for real words - not that Hux would have listened to them anyway. His consciousness clung to the back of Hux’s skull like a leech. _You won’t die alone._

 

Hux almost laughed, but agony made it catch in his throat. Tears came instead: unbidden, unwanted, yet another thing betraying him. Leave it to Ren to be sentimental, to be _comforting_ , at a moment as dreadful as this. The tears were the only warmth left in his body, and now they were rolling pitifully down his cheeks. Ren’s grip on his hand was unbearably tight.

 

It was through his tears - and a caving away of the earth not far to their left, causing him to look up - that he suddenly saw it.

 

A ship.

 

Small, half-crumpled, teetering on a ragged edge of earth. But a ship nonetheless.

 

“Ren,” he breathed aloud, his throat scraped raw from raging at the treasonous shuttle, “there’s - there’s a ship.”

 

Ren was barely awake, his presence hanging onto Hux’s by a metaphysical finger. He barely perked up when Hux said it, so Hux tried again. He captured the image of the ship with his mind - the crinkled plasteel, the half-open hatch, how impossibly _close_ it is to them - and pushed it toward Ren as best he can. Ren’s eyes cracked open, head turning to try and find the small, immobile thing. His hand tightened on Hux’s impossibly more when he found it.

 

_It’s not far,_ Hux thought hurriedly, frantically. His sense of self-preservation that seemed to exist within him naturally was finally kicking in. _We can - we can get to it._

 

Ren’s eyes stayed focused on the ship. _I can’t, Hux._

 

_You can,_ Hux shot back, _and you will. That’s an order._

 

Ren’s grip on him loosened - a tiny, but perceptible difference. Hux compensated for the minuscule loss by tightening his own hand around the larger one. The uncomfortable slip of leather on leather chafed the smooth skin of his palm, but it was hardly on the forefront of Hux’s frazzled mind. His only focus was Ren’s swiftly fading consciousness, the ever-growing puddle of crimson beneath them both - they didn’t have much time left. Another shake of the dying planet cemented that in them both.

 

_You can make it_ , Ren whispered in his head, eerily quiet. Eerily calm. _It isn’t far, I can sense it. You’re far less hurt - you can make it, Hux._

 

“ _Kriff_ , Ren, I can’t just leave you here,” Hux rasped into the shuddering air. There was far too much emotion bleeding into his voice, causing it to crack and tremble. But it was nonsensical to worry about emotion right now, even if he could control it. It was only the two of them there - no one left to impress on this now-worthless base. “Put your self-loathing to the side for one pfassking minute and _get up_.”

 

But Ren only laid his head back down on the snow, snow-soaked hair falling about his face like a dark halo. His eyes fell shut, and he breathed out an almost peaceful sigh. His skin that wasn’t marred or swathed in blood was akin to snow.

 

Panic was steadily building in Hux’s chest, threatening to bubble over like the magma beneath the planet’s bedrock. The minutes were ticking by, no longer agonizingly slow but swift and very much fleeting. The planet trembled violently underneath them, distant haunting groans filling the air as another piece of the surface gave way. Starkiller was sounding off her death rattle; any moment now would be her last.

 

Through tears of pain and frustration, Hux looked up from Ren to gaze upon the ship. It was close - what little strength he had left would get him there. He could do it. He could make it out alive.

 

_That’s right,_ Ren murmured, mournfully soft. _Go to it._

 

“Get out of my head, Ren,” he spat back in reply. He could feel it - Ren’s presence, impossibly weak and fading, still trying to claw his way into Hux’s mind. Trying to know if Hux was really going to leave him.

 

Oh, how Hux could. He was bleeding heavily, slowly freezing to death, lungs filling with the swirling smoke and ash that was once Starkiller’s insides. But he still had fire in his veins, and determination deep in his belly. Leaving Ren here would be the perfect way to humiliate him and make him pay for his sins - an exquisite sip of the sadistic nature that he so desperately craved to act upon.

 

But something stopped him. Weighed him down by ankles, even more so than the fatigue.

 

If the General had ever felt _guilt_ in his life, now was not the time for it.

 

“Kriff,” he swore again, letting his head hang. He couldn’t believe he - General Starkiller himself, famed for being the First Order’s personal harbinger of death - was about to do this. He breathed, shaky and rattling. In, out, timed with another quake of the ground.

 

And then, he gingerly reached out towards Ren.

 

The man, barely conscious, was nearly impossible to move. He lay limp and ashen, so cold that Hux feared he was already dead, save for that little dot of presence that lingered at the base of Hux’s skull. Still alive, but just barely. Hux knotted his fingers in Ren’s tattered shawls, tugging him up into a sitting position; both screaming with the effort and pain their movement caused, they nearly toppled back over onto the ground, but somehow Hux steadied them. Together, they supported one another and staggered toward the glinting shuttle.

 

“Stay awake, Ren,” Hux shouted over the roar of the planet, keeping both Ren from drifting away, and himself from losing focus. “We’re nearly there. Stay awake, you bloody oaf.”

 

So close. They were _so close_. Meters away, maybe, if not less. The hull of the tiny ship gleamed oh so tantalizingly bright in the flickering blaze of the forest.

 

And then-

 

A horrifying groan. Hux froze, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up instantly. He thought, through a cloud of pain and panic, that it was _Ren_ making the noise, but-

 

No. Too loud, too deep. Too _inhuman._

 

It was almost too late when he realized: it was the planet, screaming beneath them. Singing her own funeral dirge as she _gave way under their feet._

 

Hux screamed, clinging tighter to Ren as the ground dropped out from under their feet, a trap door made of earth and snow giving way unto the. Hux felt, for one nightmarish moment, the wall of heat rising up to greet them from the underworld; he was weightless in the next moment, body supported by nothing but the ashen air. He shut his eyes and hung on for dear life, anticipating the great final fall.

 

But they didn’t fall. They didn’t plunge and disappear into the fiery depths.

 

They didn’t move at all.

 

Hux, instead of being relieved, feared the worst. _We’ve already fallen and now we’re dead, we’re still in the process of falling and I just can’t feel it, we’re falling in slow motion and if I open my eyes I’ll see the glorious guts of this Maker-forsaken planet before I become alight -_

 

Against all rational thought, Hux opened his eyes.

 

Trapped in a vice-grip embrace to Ren’s chest, Hux could see little more than Ren’s face directly in front of him. It was ash-smeared, pale, and shockingly blank. The slightest strain made his forehead wrinkle, but his eyes were shut, as if he were sleeping.

 

But he could tell that they were perfectly still. Past Ren’s ear, he could see the Starkiller’s surface layer, about level with their knees. Below that, the glow of the planet’s molten core.

 

Hux watched him, too petrified by pure terror to look down.

 

_How? How is this happening?_

 

“Ren,” Hux breathed, chest heaving as he slowly became aware, “are we - are we _floating_?”

 

Ren did not answer, but Hux already knew. They were floating, suspended by the Force above the great chasm that had been solid ground only moments ago.

 

And then, they weren’t floating. Instead, they were flying - _flying_ \- over the open expanse, propelled by seemingly nothing more than the smoky air and Ren’s sheer will. Hux’s entire body locked up in fear as they zoomed across the distance between newly made cliffs. And then, with a thump and a crunch and a great deal of pain, Hux’s back was hitting something solid and cold. It took him a blink or two to determine that it was the ground.

 

They had landed on the other side, right next to the dented shuttle.

 

“Maker bless you, Ren,” Hux panted, clutching his chest as his breathing began to steady. He was still bleeding somewhere, and every part of his body ached, but he was alive. He was alive - and he couldn’t believe it. “You managed to finally be useful.”

 

Ren, collapsed on his back next to him, did not answer.

 

“Ren?”  Hux struggled to sit up. He gently jostled Ren, but no answer or response came - the man was still alive, but passed out cold. The panic that had died down started to build up again in Hux’s core. They needed to get out of here as soon as possible - and it simply wasn’t possible when the only decent pilot between the two of them was unconscious. “Ren, wake up,” he hissed urgently. His shaking became more intense as time went on with Ren still unmoving.

 

The ground had begun to tremble again.

 

“Pfassk,” Hux swore.

 

His bones didn’t feel sturdy enough to lift Ren again. But if he didn’t…

 

Without a second thought that dealt with impending doom, Hux scrambled to his feet, driven by some last-minute burst of adrenaline that pounded its way through his veins from his overworked heart. He couldn’t lift Ren - he didn’t even attempt it, for fear of collapsing - but he had just enough strength to take hold of the big oaf’s arm and drag him to the shuttle’s half open hatch. Squeezing himself and Ren through the doorway, Hux finally let relief flood through him as he slammed the door shut; with the outside world safely blocked off, he slid down the side of the shuttle and practically melted onto the floor.

 

“Alright, Ren,” Hux called out, stretching out a sore leg and tapping Ren with a boot. He was close to blacking out, eyes wanting to drift closed every time he blinked. “I can’t… I can’t pilot this type of ship. It’s your turn to do something.”

 

Again, Ren did not answer.

 

“Ren.” Hux tried to growl it, but it came out as more of a whimper. “ _Ren!_ ”

 

There was barely a rise and fall of Ren’s massive chest. Barely breathing, barely living.

 

“Ren, please,” Hux cried, beginning to sob. He had been relieved only moments ago; safe from the ash and cold and firefight when the shuttle door clicked,

 

But help was not coming.

 

If there was one thing about himself that General Hux took pride in the most, it was that he never gave up. Through smoke-stung eyes and blaster wounds and cuts and burns and bruises, Hux clenched his teeth, swallowed down the blood and bile, and began to crawl across the shuttle floor.

 

The shuttle was (thankfully, blessedly) small, so he didn’t have to crawl far. The space where he and Ren had collapsed at was what qualified as the cargo bay - an empty square of space that took up a little over two thirds of the craft. The meager cockpit took up the remaining third, two seats and a simple control panel separated by a slim doorway. Hux crawled - half hands and knees, half army style down on his belly - through that doorway and dragged himself into the pilot’s chair. In the silence of the craft, his ears began to ring from the damage done by the explosions, drowning out the sound of his own grunts and groans of agony. Blackness pressed at the corners of his vision.

 

Hux surveyed the tiny control board in front of him; the ship’s auxiliary power had kept the lights on, illuminating the various buttons and switches and levers that it apparently needed to get this craft into the air. Hux, used to much more luxurious craft, thought: _Something so crude shouldn’t be so complicated._

 

He punched a button. The engine roared to life.

 

The ground beneath began to shutter.

 

He pulled on the ship’s toggle switch. It did not lift into the air.

 

Another rumble, this time closer. Longer.

 

He punched another button, flipped a switch. The engine roared again, but no lift.

 

A _roar_ that wasn’t the ship.

 

“Maker damn it,” Hux snarled. His patience - and waking hours - were running slim. Desperate, he began to hit other buttons that he wasn’t exactly sure the function of. “Work, work, please, just something _work-_ ”

 

Just as the ground beneath the shuttle groaned, creaked, trembled, and _fell_ , the ship’s thrusters finally kicked on and propelled them into the air. Hux was thrown back in his seat, just in time grabbing hold onto the toggle switch and pointing it up, up, upward the star-speckled night. They soared, reaching the edge of the atmosphere far faster than Hux thought possible - his blinks were becoming longer and longer, though, so perhaps it had taken them the right amount of time after all. Once they were out into space - clogged with Rebel and First Order fleet alike, but all fleeing from the Base in different directions - Hux didn’t let up on the throttle, but turned the ship to the right, and kept speeding onward into distant space. Starkiller glowed beneath them, pulsing hot and molten, a volcano ready to erupt.

 

A rustle came from the cargo bay behind him. Ren stirred, and Hux felt his consciousness latch on to the back of his mind once more. _Well done,_ General, Ren whispered in his mind. Hux did not answer - he was too busy staring down at Starkiller, his baby, his wonderful disaster.

 

“I was right the first time. It is kind of beautiful,” Hux whispered, more to himself than to Ren. His eyes were sliding closed with satisfying finality. “And a waste. A beautiful waste.”

 

The last thing Hux saw was Starkiller Base explode.


	2. Chapter Two

When Hux woke up, the ship was headed for the ground.

 

He started, bolting upright before crying out in pain. He had been slumped over, half in the chair and half sliding out onto the floor when a sudden jerking movement had startled him into awareness. Now, half awake and sore down to his marrow, he watched as the surface of an unknown planet came closer and closer, the ship still flying at top speed. With a sharp cry of panic, Hux dove for the toggle switch, but before he could get there, his world went sideways.

 

A sickening _tug_ hit him in the middle, right in the gap between his ribs and his gut, flinging him from his seat as if an invisible hand had a hold on him. Hux went flying from the pilot seat, across the tiny cockpit, only to be roughly deposited into the co-pilot chair less than five feet to his left. No sooner was he out of the pilot seat was a dark figure sweeping into the room and taking his place.

 

Ren slid into the pilot chair - naturally, smoothly, with all the grace someone who wasn’t bleeding everywhere and barely cognizant tended to possess. “Hold on,” he warned as his massive hands closed around the toggle switch.

 

The ground - sea, actually, bright and blue and shiny - was approaching fast. It was a far cry from the burning nightmare of Starkiller, so smooth and glassy and overall inviting; but Hux knew that from this distance, and going at this rate of speed, the shuttle would flatten as if it hit a steel wall. He braced himself for impact, even celebrated the irony of surviving Starkiller, only to be killed by water.

 

And then Ren tugged the switch back, and the world was right again.

 

The force of the radical shift sucked them both back into their seats, eliciting groans of pain and discomfort from both injured men. In addition to the holes in him from Rebel blasters, Hux’s ribcage now ached horribly, and his spine stung from the impact of hitting the chair. “I could have done that,” he attempted to argue, but his throat was so raw and sore that it came out as nothing more than a rasp.

 

Whether Ren ignored him or simply didn’t hear him, Hux couldn’t say. They glided over the cristaline water in silence for miles and miles, seemingly without end.

 

“Where are we?” Ren finally asked, his voice just as ragged. He was still deathly pale, and there was a jagged slice cutting its way diagonally across his face that Hux hadn’t noticed before. With an air of envious familiarity, Ren swept his hands over the control panel; he fiddled with the navigational system and brought up a galactic quadrant map that Hux couldn’t place. “I don’t recognize this planetary system.”

 

“I don’t know,” Hux replied, lost in thought trying to decipher where exactly they had ended up. “I can’t imagine that we’re far from Starkiller, but I don’t recognize this quadrant at all.”

 

Ren turns to look at him, tired face suddenly ready to spit fire. “What do you mean, you don’t know? You were the one flying, Hux!”

 

“Was I flying just now, when I was flung from my karking chair?” Hux hissed back, matching Ren’s pitch and volume to a tee. He was used to playing this game with Ren - which one could be the loudest, or get the last word in - and even at the end of the world, they were still up for it. “You should be grateful that I even got us off Starkiller at all, seeing as how you did nothing-”

 

His voice suddenly cut off, and he felt an all too familiar invisible hand close around his fragile throat. Ren’s Force hand clenched tight as a vice; Hux’s hands flew to grab at the sensation, fingers trying to dig into a crushing weight that he knew he could never hope to touch. He looked to Ren, eyes bulging, pleading for some sort of mercy, but finding only cold anger in Ren’s dark stare.

 

“Saving you from plunging into the heart of Starkiller Base wasn’t _nothing_ , General,” Ren hissed, his voice quiet as a whisper but more deadly than Hux had ever heard it before. The vice grip constricting his windpipe tightened when Ren said the word nothing, as if to create literal, palpable punctuation. “I suggest you think about what comes out of your mouth, seeing as I am the one who saved you then, and who also just saved you now.”

 

Hux tore his eyes away from Ren, only to catch on an even worse sight outside the shuttle’s windshield. Desperate, Hux croaked to gain Ren’s attention, but the sound that came from his throat was entirely unintelligible.

 

Ren simply laughed mirthlessly, taking sadistic pleasure in watching Hux’s face turn gradient shades of red and purple as his own hand tightened in time with the Force hand. In a cruel display of mercy, Ren released his hand just the tiniest bit to allow Hux to breathe. “What was that, General Hux?”

 

For the second time, and with an urgent jab of his finger, Hux croaked, “Land!”

 

Ren’s face froze, and with a dramatically slow head turn, he looked to the world outside.

 

Seemingly out of nowhere, an enormous, jagged monstrosity of an island had popped up, and the shuttle was heading straight for it. Not once had their speed been adjusted since entering the atmosphere, not even when they were hurtling toward the open ocean with complete abandon. How many times would they face certain death before running into its jaws once more?

 

In a flurry of movement, Ren released his Force hold on Hux’s throat, and lunged forward to grab the toggle. The island, big and black and looming as death, was all they could see out the window before them. There was no way Ren could get them out of this one, not when they had tempted fate so recurrently.

 

Hux shut his eyes. He had seen the jaws of death close around him too many times - when it finally clamped down, he could spare himself the view.

 

Ren yanked the toggle to the left, and Hux felt the world tip on its edge.

 

There was no crash.

 

By some miraculous stroke of luck, the ship darted around the edge of the black rock, scraping its underbelly along the rough spires and cliffs. Hux and Ren hung on for dear life as the ship tipped even further vertically, until it was entirely parallel to the rock; Hux felt Ren’s giant Force hand return to his middle, holding him into his seat like a belt to keep him from tumbling about the cockpit. Ren tightened his grip on the toggle and urged it forward, sending them through the open air even faster. Both men screamed as the force of the zooming ship sucked at the skin of their faces.

 

Within a few, frightening seconds, the ship hurtled past the island. Ren tipped the toggle, and the world was right side up again.

 

“Karking hells,” Hux cussed, clutching his chest as he tried to regulate his breathing. His exhausted body was beginning to tremble head to toe, the adrenaline rush from staring down certain doom finally hitting his already shell-shocked system. “I thought we were dead.”

 

“Well, we’re not,” Ren responded, glaring at Hux out of the corner of his eye as he piloted the ship toward a low-lying land mass on the horizon. He was breathing hard through his nostrils, but otherwise seemed to be unfazed by the latest risk to their well-being. It occurred to Hux, moments later, that this risky business might be something Ren dealt with every day. With a nonchalant yet threatening tone, Ren  “That’s three times now that I’ve saved us, General. It’s _your_ turn to do it. I suggest you start by figuring out a way to get us back to the fleet.”

 

“Get us… back?” Hux’s heart rate finally steadied long enough for him to be able to focus on something else - namely, what Ren was rambling on about. “Ren, I’ve no idea where we even _are_. And besides…”

 

“Then _figure it out_ , General, or are you equally as useless at everything?” Ren snarled through his teeth, slamming his enormous hands down on several buttons to bring up the holo-nav system once more. “And ‘besides’ what?”

 

_Besides, we have nothing to go back to._

 

Hux stared at the man to his left, now leaning intensely over the control panel as he scanned the horizon. “You don’t know,” Hux said simply, observing.  

 

“I don’t know _what_?” Ren shouted. “I think you’ve hit your head one too many times, General.”

 

_You don’t know we’ve been betrayed._

 

Hux took a slow, deep breath, feeling it stick in his ribs. “We can’t go back, Ren.”

 

“We can. We _have_ to.”

 

Hux shook his head. “No, we _can’t_. If we do, we’ll be killed.”

 

“You’re absolutely delusional,” Ren scoffed. “You’re so embarrassed by the destruction of Starkiller that you don’t want to go back. Nevermind that it’s your duty to return, to lead your fleet - you just want to run and hide so that someone else will take the blame. We all failed, Hux, but we don’t have time to wallow in it. Some of us have to put Starkiller behind us and-”

 

“Ren!” Hux interrupted. “Why do you think I was _on_ Starkiller? Why do you think we were both there, while everyone else fled?”

 

At that, Ren went silent.

 

“They left me there, Ren. They left us both there,” Hux nearly whispered, the gravity of his own words starting to break him. “To pay for it. To die.”

 

Ren said nothing for a long while, but finally, he fervently shook his head. “They wouldn’t do that to us. _Snoke_ wouldn’t do that to-”

 

Then, Ren froze. His dark eyes searched the air for something intangible.

 

“Snoke,” he whispered. “Snoke’s - he’s gone.”

 

Hux gripped the edges of his seat, in a sudden panic. How could their Supreme Leader suddenly be gone? Had something happened between Starkiller and now? A mutiny, perhaps? A coup, set into motion in the wake of the First Order’s biggest disaster to date? It wasn’t unlikely that one would be attempted, but who - besides the two of them here, sitting side by side in the cockpit of a rickety old transport - could possibly even hope to succeed?

 

“What do you mean _gone_ , Ren?” Hux asked, trying to quell his rising anxiety.

 

“I mean he’s… he’s not here,” Ren clarified, taking one hand off the control panel to point a finger toward his face. “In my head. He’s - he’s just gone.” Hux shook his head, not understanding. Ren went on to explain, “I have always been able to feel the Supreme Leader’s presence through the Force. But now… there is no one there. An empty space, where he used to be.”

 

Hux sucked his teeth, thinking on it. His grasp on the mystical properties of the Force was minimal at best, but this sudden absence of a presence only signified one thing to him. “He’s detached from you,” he mused. “Severed his ties.”

 

“...But why would he do that?”

 

“Is it really not obvious to you, Ren?” Hux burst out, voice crackling in both injury and frustration. “Because he thinks you’re _dead_. He left us to die on Starkiller, and he thinks that we really did perish. There’s no need to keep hanging on to a dead person.”

 

Once his words sunk in, Ren had nothing more to say.

 

The landmass on the horizon had appeared before them at last - not made of rock like the island that nearly killed them, but instead of dark earth and plush greenery - and Ren began to hit buttons and levers that signalled a planned descent. After who knows how long trapped in this shuttering rust bucket, Hux’s body ached to be back on an unmoving flat surface; this place could be swarming with Rebels and dangerous creatures and poisonous plants, but as long as he could lie down, he did not care.

 

It was just as well. They were already dead, in a way. Right?

 

\---

 

The shuttle, for all its simplicity and crudeness, did yield some hidden blessings after all.

 

After landing on the edge of what seemed to be an uninhabited plot of forest, Hux and Ren searched the tiny craft for any supplies that could aid them in their survival. They were both still in great pain, wounds open and weeping as if they were fresh, so it became their first priority to treat their broken bodies before making any other grand plans. After all the brushes with death they’d scraped their way through, dying of infection seemed most anticlimactic.

 

The ship’s few compartments had offered the bare minimum of standard First Order supplies: several spare changes of grey clothes (only one of which that would fit Ren’s bulky body), some old packs of army rations, and med kits that were covered with dust, but thankfully, left unopened.

 

Ren had treated his (enviously) few wounds and changed. Now, it was Hux’s turn.

 

With great effort and gritting of teeth, Hux peeled his greatcoat off his body. Blood and gore from the various blaster holes in his body - a deep one in his side that had somehow not killed him, a graze or two on his left arm, and one on each leg that he hadn’t even been privy to until now - had dried stuck down to the holes in his clothing, making it excruciating and grotesquely messy to pry his clothing free. The Rebel blasters were bordering on toy weapons with their effectiveness, with weak laser bolts and laughable inaccuracy, but when they hit, they still burned like the fire of all seven Sith hells. It was all he could do to keep from screaming as he stripped, wiped himself at least halfway clean, smeared as much bacta gel as he could on his split open body, and wrapped bandages around the worst of the intrusions. Tears pooled at the corners of his eyes, but he willed them not to fall.

 

Hux changed into the stiff grey shirt and trousers, then sat on the floor of the shuttle, winded. He needed a moment alone, in the quiet of the vehicle. To gather his thoughts. To breathe. He wanted to sleep more than anything, purposely this time, but that would have to wait.

 

Ren was outside, keeping watch. Hux could see him through the cockpit’s front glass, leaning against the shuttle hull. His back was to Hux, dark eyes scanning the treeline for signs of danger.

 

He had to be thinking about the betrayal, like Hux was.

 

It was one thing to have been abandoned on Starkiller to die. To act as the scapegoat for the whole First Order’s failure - and yes, there were many more people to blame here than just Ren and himself - and to be able to do nothing but accept that it happened and move on. But it was another ordeal altogether for them to be stuck _together_ in it, without anyone else being aware. No one else knew what had happened to them but one another. The whole of the Order would move on without them - Snoke already had, having detached himself from Ren’s consciousness. They would be presumed dead, and then they would be replaced. A blip on the screen, before flat lines took hold again.

 

It was… disappointing. Morbidly disappointing. If he were to die for the First Order, he had at least wanted everyone to know _why_. Going out with a bang had sounded oh so desirable.

 

After a long pause, Hux finally reached up and hit the shuttle door’s latch. The door slid open slowly, creaking as it went; Hux saw Ren turn his head at the front of the ship, but he made no move to come back inside. With a sigh that morphed into a groan, Hux hauled himself to his feet and stepped outside, using the side of the shuttle as support as he limped around to where Ren had set up to keep watch. Ren acknowledged him with a nod, but nothing more.

 

“Well?” Hux asked as Ren continued to stare ahead, arms crossed. “What do we do now?”

 

Ren pursed his lips, contemplating. His eyes scanned their surroundings, as if the trees could tell him the answer. A part of Hux hoped that they would, though he knew it was highly unlikely - but his skull hurt, and his brain ached, so he relied on anyone else but himself to plan their next move.

 

“I don’t know,” was all Ren could whisper.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you wanna keep up to date on my life, my writing, and my art, make sure you follow me on here, as well as on tumblr (@begforyourmercy) to show your support :)


	3. Chapter Three

When Hux had said he didn’t care if the island was a Rebel base, so long as he could rest, he hadn’t actually  _ meant _ it. 

 

But here he was, being roughly awoken in the middle of the sleep cycle, by the sounds of gunfire and spacecraft sailing overhead, as well as Ren screaming in his ear to get up and move.

 

Hux and Ren had been at odds about what to do next, naturally; it came as no surprise that both men were confused, seeing as life as they knew it had just come to an abrupt halt. Neither man said it, but they saw it as a good sign that they could still bicker and fight each other as if everything was just as it had been before Starkiller. It was a sign that despite all they’d been through, despite all they had lost, they still had their wits about them. And that meant there was hope for survival, and as Hux had secretly begun to hope, hope for  _ revenge _ in the distant future.

 

They settled on resting for the time being. Both Hux and Ren were wary of each other - those closest to them had betrayed them already, they wouldn’t put it past each other to do it again - so an agreement was made to allow some reprieve, as well as to keep them safe. One would sleep inside the safety of the shuttle, while the other kept watch for danger outside.

 

Ren had chosen to keep watch first. Hux had been drifting off into a light sleep, his blaster within reach of his hand, when the Rebels had suddenly alerted them to their presence, and Ren had thrown the door open.

 

“Wake up, General,” Ren hollered, nudging Hux in the leg as he stormed through the doorway and practically threw himself into. “We need to get moving. As it turns out, we’ve landed within reach of a Rebel rendezvous point.”

 

Hux, curled up pathetically on the floor and using his destroyed greatcoat as a pillow, groaned angrily as he hauled himself up from the ground. He limped into the co-pilot’s chair, blinking poorly-obtained sleep from his eyes. “You can’t be pfassking serious,” Hux moaned, searching out the cockpit window for any sign of the approaching Rebels. They could hear them - the whirring of the aircraft, nearly invisible in the planet’s intense darkness, and the echoing shouts of the vile rebel armies as they discovered that they were not alone on this land - but so far, they had yet to spot where they were coming from.

 

And then, they appeared. Far away in the distance, lights started to bounce and dance among the dark forest, melting out of the night like ghosts transposing into corporeal form. Ren swore under his breath, working fast to get the shuttle up and running. “I wish I wasn’t, General. But wishes aren’t likely to get us out of this mess.”

 

“Couldn’t you have known that they were coming? That they were  _ here _ ?” Hux had just noticed that the pilot’s chairs had seat belts attached to them. Happy to spare himself another gut injury from Ren’s Force hand grabbing him when the flying got rough, he hurriedly began to buckle himself in. “Or do your Force senses fail to work now that your master has abandoned you?”

 

As soon as the nasty comments escaped his mouth, Hux expected to retaliation to rain down upon him. But instead, Ren ceased pushing buttons and revving the shuttle engine for a heartbeat or two. “Actually, I have a theory about that,” he replied in an odd tone.

 

Hux cocked an eyebrow, despite Ren not looking his way. “A… theory? Relating to what?”

 

“Wel… If what you say about our betrayal is true-”

 

“It  _ is _ , Ren.”

 

“If what you say is true, then Snoke believes that I’m dead,” Ren went on to explain. “He has disconnected his presence from mine, so he can no longer directly watch or influence me. But-” he paused to finally hit the thrusters, sending the ship up into the air just as the first of the Rebels broke through the treeline, “- if I were to tap into the Force for any reason at all, it would ripple across the galaxy, and Snoke would immediately be able to sense my presence. He could fill that space in my head just as soon as he’d left it - and he could destroy my mind even faster than that.”

 

“So, what you’re telling me is that-” Hux flinched as he felt blaster fire start to ping and pop against the metal-sided shuttle, “- if you were to use the Force, Snoke would immediately kill you.”

 

“Exactly, General.”

 

Hux couldn’t resist it - he let out a sharp, humorless bark of a laugh. “Well, isn’t that lovely.”

 

The fire began to come heavier and heavier, rattling the sides of the small ship. With every blast, the next one seemed to come twice as quick, raining down upon them with the intensity and anger of a Rebellion long awaiting their victory. Ren jerked the toggle wildly from left to right, sending them hurtling through the air in nauseating patterns; the lights of Resistance fighters on the ground and in the air soon became indistinguishable, and Hux could hardly tell what was up or down.

 

“They’re giving it all they’ve got,” Hux said, gripping the co-pilot seat until his knuckles turned white as bone. “We need to lose them before we can escape. What can we do?”

 

Ren’s eyes glinted, bloodthirsty. “We fight back.”

 

\---

 

“Why doesn’t this thing have  _ guns _ ?”

 

“It’s a supply transport, not a battle-ready vehicle,” Ren called back indignantly while he fought to steer the shuttle out of the deadly array of the Rebel fleet. Hux stood near the shuttle door, armed with a heavy blaster that he’d found while searching desperately for a weapon amongst the shuttle’s storage. His own blaster would do little to stop the Rebel’s ships, but this heavy blaster - battered and used as it might be - would hopefully be enough of a deterrent to allow them to get off this planet alive. “There’s no need for guns on a ship that no one bothers to fire at!”

 

“Well, they’re firing at us  _ now _ , aren’t they?” Hux slid the shuttle door back a pinch, pointing the muzzle of the heavy blaster through the small opening and peering down its sights. He fired off a few rounds, hitting the leading Rebel squads across their noses. The ships fell back, disoriented; one plummeted from the sky as a hole burned through the windshield, the pilot taken out. Hux smiled grimly at his successful marksmanship.

 

As they neared the atmosphere, Hux was forced to give up the firefight and seal the door closed once more. He collapse back into the cockpit, content to see that he’d dropped at least a few of the Rebel scum, sending them plummeting back to the surface to die a well-deserved, painful death. Now, all that was left was to escape the rest of the fighters and disappear into the night.

 

Ren dove and ducked his way through the remains of the fleet, gritting his teeth so hard that Hux could see the muscles in his jaw jump. He squashed himself further down in his seat, trying to keep pas much distance between Ren and himself as he could; he especially made sure to not make a sound, for fear that the murderous glint in Ren’s eye fall on him and name him the next victim. There had been moments, for as long as he’d known Ren, in which he was so immature and irrational that Hux only describe him as being laughable. But now, trapped in the same space as him amid a battle for their lives, Hux was becoming privy to another side of the man that was unstoppable, unknowable, and completely and utterly terrifying. 

 

The Rebels, as their ships began to break the atmosphere, finally came to a halt. Hux and Ren sped on, into the sparsity of stars that lay beyond.

 

The only sound in the cockpit was their ragged breathing.

 

Finally, Ren broke the calm. “I’ve done as much as I can, General,” Ren said, sounding defeated for the first time since he had resigned himself to death on Starkiller. “It’s time for you to take over the plan.”

 

It was then, faced with this challenge of how to survive, that Hux realized he did not feel like himself. He had not felt like himself since Starkiller had blown, in fact, but it had just taken him so much time to become aware of it. He did not feel like the fear-inciting General Hux, high commander of the First Order and second only to Supreme Leader Snoke. Instead, he felt like nothing more than a piece of rubbish: riddled with holes, ripped and torn at all the edges and the middle, all used up and no longer of any use. Snoke had tossed him aside just as such. 

 

He felt about as qualified to strategize as a child playing professional Sabacc.

 

But still, he had to try.

 

“Well, let’s look at our record thus far,” he started. “We’ve been axed from our posts and given a death sentence. But, seeing as we’re still alive, the death sentence has obviously failed. As long as we lay low and keep away from anything relating to the First Order, we have guaranteed survival.”  _ Good _ , Hux thought,  _ this sounds good so far _ . “But on the other hand, we have the Resistance to worry about. If we come into contact with them at any point, they will either do two things: kill us on sight, or hand us back over to the First Order, who will most definitely kill us on sight. 

 

“So, we need to find middle ground,” Hux concluded, feeling a dampened sense of pride at how he was holding it all together and still managing to make sense. “Somewhere that neither the First Order nor the Resistance has any reach or power. Remote locations would be best. Planets with sparse life. And we will have to relocate often - keep suspicion from arising, as well as keeping a safe distance.”

 

Ren knit his brow together, but Hux could tell it was from being reminded of their odds. It sounded simple and easy when Hux laid it out, but in reality, it was far from either. 

 

“So?” Ren asked. 

 

“So, I guess we’re on the run now,” Hux murmured into the silence.

 

He had been expecting Ren to make some snide comment, to ridicule him for his obvious and overly simplistic statement. Instead, Ren glanced over, his expression riding the line between being solemn and morose. His dark eyes held the intensity - the anger, the sorrow, the frustration, the loss, all of it - his face couldn’t show. “I guess we are.”


	4. Chapter Four

The Outer Rim is not a good place to live. It is, however, a very good place not to die.

 

Hux had to tell himself this numerous times a cycle, just to keep himself from commandeering the karking shuttle and flying it all the way back to the plush comforts of the Finalizer. 

 

“Need any help?” Hux called out into the world outside. He was sitting on the floor of the shuttle cargo bay, trying in vain to stitch together the ragged holes in his greatcoat with a needle and thread from the med kit. The coat was hardly of any use anymore - aside from the numerous rips and tears, it was simply too recognizable for him to sport - but the heavy gaberwool would suffice for a blanket until a better one could be found. They were stopped at a fuel station, somewhere lonely and nondescript in the Outer Rim regions. Ren was outside, patching up the shuttle’s chipped paint and blaster scorches left by the incident with the Rebels, as well as covering up the all-too-obvious First Order insignia on the rear.

 

_None that you could provide_ , came Ren’s reply, muttered into the dark corners of Hux’s mind.

 

Startled, and more than a little irate, Hux threw down his sewing project, mustered up all his strength, and limped his way outside. “Stop doing that,” he huffed, worked up by both anger at Ren as well as frustration at his still-sore wounds. It had been nearly two weeks, and he hadn’t seemed to heal a bit. “Not only is it _dangerous_ , Ren, but I also don’t want you in my head.”

 

“Don’t think so loud, then,” Ren replied, far too relaxed as he slapped grey paint atop the shuttle’s surface. It was a painfully obvious cover-up, but it was the best they could do at the moment. Hux prided himself on thinking of the idea, regardless of how it looked. “And it’s not dangerous. You know that.”

 

Throughout the thirteen days stuck with Ren, he’d become subject to the all of the man’s infuriating idiosyncrasies: this latest one being figuring out that his mental communication - his mental _intrusions_ , rather - did not produce a single ripple in the Force, when done at close range. Excited by this knowledge that he could still utilize his powers without immediately being axed by his former master, Ren had plagued Hux non-stop with invasive mind messages instead of conversing out loud like a normal person. No matter how many times Hux asked him to cease, Ren insisted on carrying on, day in and day out.

 

Hux still had trouble believing that it had been thirteen full cycles since Starkiller had blown. Thirteen days adrift in space, trapped in a tiny metal tube with a man he couldn’t stand, but somehow felt indebted to, and was now more than likely never going to get away from. Thirteen days on the run. This timeline they would not have otherwise known, save for a chance occurrence, later on after the shuttle had been painted, that stunned them both when Ren managed to get the shuttle’s radio comm to sputter to life. It hadn’t worked the entire time they’d been aboard, but after a few minutes of mindless tinkering, voices of some galactic-wide news show began babbling through at a startling volume.

 

“Ugh, turn it off,” Ren had scoffed after listening intently for a few ticks, waving his hand in a throwaway motion to illustrate his disdain before reaching for the comm dial. “All it’s picking up is tabloid garbage-”

 

“No, wait!” Hux cried out, swatting Ren’s hand away before it could touch the radio comm. “I swore I heard - Ren, I think they’re talking about us.”

 

The language was something that neither Hux nor Ren could speak fluently, but it was close enough to humanoid, so together, they could decode it bit by bit with the words they caught. Sure enough, the news story was a recap of what had occurred on Starkiller, starting with the sudden Resistance attack, and ending with the planet becoming unstable, rupturing and exploding from the inside out. A long list of First Order officers killed in the battle followed the recap; Hux and Ren were the last two on the roster, tacked on with the rest as if their deaths had merely been a normal side effect of war.

 

The news snippet came to an end, and an overly-synthed song began to bubble through in its place. Only now did Hux hit the dial and turn it off, leaving them sitting in stunned silence.

 

“Huh,” mumbled Ren, slumped bonelessly in the pilot chair; his face had been sucked dry of any and all emotion. “I guess they really do think we’re dead.”

 

Hux sighed, feeling just as drained. “I guess so.”

 

“I mean, we already knew, but-” He cut off, fist suddenly clenching as his emotions seemed to rush back into his body at full force. Hux worried he was about to grab for the lightsaber at his hip and start hacking into the shuttle, effectively ruining their only vessel, but instead, he just shook his head. “It’s a whole different story to hear it.”

 

Hux hummed in response, at a loss for words himself. Ren was right in some strange way: it was one thing to have to go through the ordeal, but it was altogether something else to be reminded of it. He’d felt it deep in his gut, Starkiller’s death - every Rebel divebomb, every explosion, every crack in her precious earth. Hux had never thought that he would experience that magnitude of pain again, but hearing it over the radio comm had quite possibly been worse. The rehashing of his mistakes was a knife jammed into his spine and dragged slowly down until it split him in two. It burned, it stung, it paralyzed.

 

But, in the same light. The pain was… liberating. Either that, or he’d gone mad.

 

“Although,” Hux mused, chewing absently at a dirty, jagged nail, “it is sort of… a good thing, perhaps. They think we’re dead, so it’s likely they won’t go looking.”

 

Ren glanced up at him, anger flashing in his wounded deer eyes, but he did not argue.

 

“Think about it, Ren,” he continued. “If, in the event that they really do believe us to be dead, we can essentially go anywhere in the galaxy and expect not to die. Well, not… _anywhere_ , anywhere, of course. As long as we lay low, keep our heads down on some remote planet for a few years…” Hux chewed on his bottom lip, feeling a bit maniacally invincible. Were they really this untouchable? “Disgraced failures with nothing to live for as we are… we get to _live_ , Ren.”

 

Ren did not speak for a long time, but his fists were clenched again. Not a good sign.

 

“If we truly get to live, General,” he finally breached the silence with, “then why don’t we go our separate ways?”

 

\---

 

After hours of thinking on it, Hux had hoped to come up with an answer besides _betrayal_.

 

He sat in the corner of a local cantina, a stone’s throw away from the fuel station where they’d parked their rickety shuttle. He nursed a foul-tasting drink that a server of a species he couldn’t name off the top of his head had given him, attempting feebly to drown his sorrows and frustrations in the murky green liquid. Ren was here too - he sat in the corner opposite him, shrouded in the few remaining scraps of black and grey that he could salvage from his tattered robes. Though they had both been apprehensive about going anywhere they could be recognized - the two of them were fresh in everyone’s minds, due to the First Order’s galaxy-wide news report - with their monotone clothes and faces beaten to all seven Sith hells and back, they were beyond unrecognizable. It was safe to be sulking in public, at least for tonight.

 

Ren had seemed to have every reason to split up: _We’ll kill each other before anyone else even gets the chance_ and _If we’re somehow exposed, it’ll be safer if we’re apart, that way, only one of us goes down instead of both_ and _Both of us in the same place would draw more attention than just one, wouldn’t it?_

 

And on top of it all, _we hate each other with every fiber of our being. At least, I know I do._

 

And Hux? He had _betrayal_.

 

It went a little bit like this in his mind: if they split, they had every opportunity to rat the other out to their enemies. A bargaining chip, a deal to cut, a back to stab. Their own life spared by relinquishing the other’s.

 

But really, shouldn’t betrayal have been enough of a reason? Hux thought so, and not just because he was desperate to stay alive amidst the chaos. Loyalty in the First Order was of the utmost importance - as General, Hux had impressed that into the very souls of his subordinates. It was complete and utter loyalty, or death - there were simply no other options. Ren hadn’t been brought up in the First Order, and he certainly liked to act as if the rules didn’t apply to him, but he had proven more than once that he understood loyalty, or at least the basest sentimentality of it. Even with his many faults, he had not ever made Hux doubt that he was committed to the cause.

 

And yet, it didn’t seem to be good enough for Ren. He had scoffed - practically laughed in his face. That was enough of a denial in itself. “I’m leaving tomorrow,” Ren had stated, speaking slowly and simply as if he were speaking to a child. “I’ve got enough credits on me for food and light travel. If I don’t, then I’ll do some bargaining - maybe trade labor for safe passage. I’ll even leave you the shuttle. How does that sound, General?”

 

Hux gave no response. He gritted his teeth, feigning anger to hide his true fear.

 

And so here they sat. In the same low-life cantina, but on opposing ends, drinking cheap concoctions to try in vain to ease their physical and mental suffering. Hux was entirely alone - sunken into his ill-fitting clothes, arms crossed over his chest, one leg propped up on the rickety bench to ease the aching of a deep blaster wound. Ren, on the other hand, was seated at a rowdy table, dealing his way into a halfhearted game of Sabacc; no doubt an attempt to find a way off planet, Ren was acting unusually charismatic and relaxed. His face was to Hux, which gave Hux plenty of opportunity to cast a furtive glance his way every few moments - letting him feel the heat of his glare, as well as making sure he didn’t take off without him tonight instead of the following day. Ren didn't bother to return his gaze.

 

Hux just so happened to glance over at the right time.

 

Too involved in his cards, Ren did not notice the man approaching him.

 

Hux did.

 

Ren did not notice how the man lurked, skirting the tables that littered the back of the room as he slowly crept toward Ren’s own table. He was too deep in his easy conversation, laughing at a joke that hadn’t reached Hux’s ears. He definitely did not notice the shiny blaster, sliding off the man’s hip and into his dark blue hand.

 

Hux was already on his feet.

 

When Ren did notice that the threat was imminent, and alarm flashed across his eyes like a bright beacon of light, it was far too late for him to take action. The blaster was raising into the air, and even if he had enough time to stop the shot, he simply had no means - if he used the Force, he would be dead anyway from Snoke’s immediate wrath. His only other weapon was his lightsaber: big and three-pronged and bright red, a telltale sign of his identity. That would render him dead as well, if only prolonged by the First Order’s or Resistance’s fastest cruiser arriving at light speed. And that was only if those already here didn't try to kill him first.

 

Ren did not have time to react.

 

But he didn’t have to - Hux had already shot him dead.

 

The man went slack, the blaster clanging loudly on the floor as it slipped from his hand. Nearly everyone in the establishment let out a collective gasp, then went completely silent; the only sound that filled the tension-riddled air was the air expelling from the man’s lungs, the hiss from the blaster hole burning through is chest, and the sickening _thud_ as he hit the cantina floor, already devoid of life. Hux made no attempt to move either, too stunned by his own actions and how quickly they had taken place. His hands, still curled around his blaster, started to shake as the adrenaline hit.

 

Ren froze, only halfway out of his chair. Their eyes met, both wide in shock.

 

A blink; a breath.

 

More silence.

 

Hux didn’t wait for Ren to speak. He turned on his heel and marched out of the cantina.

 

\---

 

It did not take long for Ren to come back.

 

He entered the shuttle quietly, slipping in stealthily like a thief in the night. Hux had left the door cracked when he’d stormed in from the cantina - hyperventilating, panicking, tearing his hair out by the root as he slid into the co-pilot seat he now claimed as his - just in case Ren ventured back anytime soon. It did not appear that Ren would even move when Hux left him behind; so still, he had stood there, so still and so entirely _stunned_ . Hux’s rare moments of bravery apparently came with the power to turn even the toughest of men to stone. But here he was: behind Hux, sliding the shuttle door closed. Still silent. Still so… _still_.

 

But just as Hux was about to speak - about to quip _It’s your turn to save me now, Ren_ \- he felt a hand, a _real_ hand, grip him by the back of his neck and pull him from his chair.

 

With the strength of ten men his size, Ren dragged Hux into the slammed him up against the wall. Hux’s head snapped back, and he saw stars as his skull connected with the metal behind him. Crying out but utterly dazed, Hux threw his hands out towards Ren’s face, thin fingers clawing at his eyes but missing every time; Ren, in violent retaliation, closed his enormous paws around Hux’s fragile throat and squeezed until Hux’s eyes threatened to roll back into his head. Hux choked out a strangled scream, hands now desperately trying to pry the vice grips that brought back the blackness at the edge of his vision.

 

“How _dare_ you,” Ren snarled, breath hot against Hux’s face as he leaned in dangerously close. The sudden warmth was a living, thriving representation of the anger boiling inside of Ren, begging to be unleashed and cause the whole shuttle to erupt into flames. Hux looked anywhere but at his murderous face, which only managed to infuriate him even more; with a rough jerk of his hands, Ren slammed Hux’s head back once more, rattling his brain into turning all attention on him. “You beg me to stay, and then you make me out to be an utter fool? Just _who_ do you think you are?”

 

“You - you couldn’t,” Hux sputtered, drool running out of the corners of his mouth as he struggled to communicate. He didn't know what kind of reaction he'd expected from Ren, but it had looked a lot more thankful in his head than the one he was getting now. Ren looked at him, an odd mixture of disgust and sheer satisfaction leaching into his mask of anger. Hux panted, the lack of air making the world in front of him spin wildly. “No - no Force… Only - saber -”

 

“Oh, _please_ ,” Ren scoffed. “We both know that I could’ve handled myself. General. You just saw the opportunity to make this all about yourself. Always about self-preservation, always about having the last word...” Ren’s lip curled up, and he looked down on Hux with something that could only be described as a weak attempt at pity. “This wasn’t about me - it was all about you, as usual.”

 

Feebly, Hux shook his head. In this state - half-choked to death, practically begging for every gasp of air that he managed to steal through Ren’s fingers - he wasn’t entirely sure what reason had led him to save Ren. A situation had arisen; he had gotten the both of them out of it. Did it have to run any deeper than that, or did Ren just take _everything_ so personal?

 

But perhaps, it _was_ personal. The fear - the pure innate fear he’d felt so deeply in his belly, seeing a weapon raised at someone else instead of at himself… It was too raw, too abhorrent, and above all, too foreign to Hux. He simply could not even begin to decipher where it had come from. Not even if he had the time for it, which Ren didn’t seem likely to give.

 

Hux felt the blood vessels in his eyes begin to pop. “No,” he croaked, desperate to be heard, even though he himself did not know what he was saying no to.

 

Ren froze. His face went slack; his hands loosened minutely.

 

Hux’s body seized the moment before his oxygen-deprived mind could even comprehend it.

 

In the split second in which Ren’s hands relaxed their tight grip, Hux brought a knee up as hard and fast as he could, and slammed his full body weight forward into Ren’s massive chest. It was a move that would normally have done nothing to faze Ren, but caught off guard and seemingly rendered vulnerable as he was, took him completely by surprise and sent him stumbling. With the wind knocked out of him, Ren lost his footing and tumbled onto his back; the metal floor of the shuttle clanged as his skull connected with it, causing him to let out a wheezing gasp of pain. Hux used the momentum of his attack and threw himself on top of Ren, forcing the air out of the man’s lungs once more as he did his best to pin him to the floor.

 

His blaster was suddenly in his hand, shoving its way into the crook of Ren’s neck, and Hux  thought so badly that he had won.

 

And then there was a glowing red blade in front of his face.

 

Hux swore as he tried to catch his breath. _Not a win, then. A stalemate_.

 

“I saved your life, Ren! Plain and simple!” Hux half-screamed in Ren’s face, voice raw and ragged from Ren’s tight grip, only recently released. He dug the tip of his blaster further into the soft skin underneath Ren’s chin - a sentiment echoed by Ren, who edged the unsteady length of his saber closer to Hux’s face. But Hux did not cower away from the deadly blade; after all he had been through, all the divebombs straight toward death he’d taken lately, the last thing that scared him in this moment was _Kylo karking Ren_ . Here, straddling Ren, one hand pushing him flat to the ground and the other holding a blaster to the Knight’s throat - here, he felt not only strong, but _invincible_ . “I saved you. It doesn’t matter how, and it sure as kriffing hells doesn’t matter why. I saved your life. And for that, _you owe me_.”

 

As the last of his croaking rant trailed off, broken voice still echoing along the shuttle walls, Hux felt his body begin to shake. The rush of adrenaline after nearly besting Ren at his own game of physical combat was just now catching up with him, sending tremors from the very top of his spine down to the very tips of his fingers. His hands were trembling so wildly that he took his finger off the trigger of his blaster, for fear of one wrong move causing him to blast a hole through Ren’s neck. He couldn’t do that now, not when he almost nearly had the upper hand. Perhaps another time, but not now.

 

It was a minuscule move, taking his finger off the blaster’s trigger, but Ren noticed nonetheless. Ren pushed the button on his saber. With a _woosh_ , the deadly blade vanished.

 

“Alright, General,” Ren breathed. He was suddenly, eerily, calm; the fiery light behind his dark eyes dimmed until nothing but a dull repose remained. “You saved me. But what, exactly, do I owe you for it?”

 

Hux’s throat ached as he repeatedly sucked at the air, but he couldn’t seem to catch his breath. This was all too much. Too much, the fighting and running and hiding and more fighting. The pain and the panic and the not knowing what will happen next. He was equipped - trained and groomed his whole life - to strategize, to plot and plan, to use logic and reason to find a straightaway through the muck. Everything was always black and white for him - how was he expecting himself to function, now that he existed only in the world of grey?

 

He didn’t know what Ren owed him. He didn’t know anything at all.

 

Lost in his own head, Hux fell back on his haunches, the blaster sliding from his hand as he crawled across the shuttle floor toward the cockpit. Ren was now free to get up - to come after him, to reignite his lightsaber and hack Hux’s head off with one fell swoop - but he didn’t move, instead choosing to lay entirely still and stare up at the shuttle’s ceiling above him. Hux left him behind and climbed into the co-pilot chair; one hand gently massaged his swelling throat, the other holding his chest as his pounding heart tried to escape it.

 

They sat in silence for a long time. Ren, on the ground; Hux, slumped in his seat.

 

“What do I owe you?” Ren asked again, still just as soft and calm as before. Hux, if he had any fire left in him, would’ve spat in his direction.

 

Instead, he just closed his eyes. A raspy sigh escaped his mouth.

 

“I’ll tell you what you owe me,” he murmured. “Don’t leave me alone.”


	5. Chapter Five

It had been three months since Starkiller, and it was beginning to fade into a distant memory.

 

His brain had once been filled with Starkiller’s life, from her very moment of conception, her magnificent birth, and all the way to her tragic death - stored and filed in the back of his mind, neatly and in chronological order. With each passing day, Hux forgot a piece of it. A glimpse of an early blueprint before they ever even broke ground; an on-site adventure down to the surface when construction was a little over halfway done; that day when she was finally completed, and he stood atop the glorious base, proclaiming to his shiny, obedient troops that this would be the day the Republic finally died, not knowing that the same sentiment would ring true for the hallowed ground he walked upon. Each day, one memory slipped away, replaced by meaningless bickering with Ren and gazing out into desolate space.

 

During his waking hours, Starkiller simply ceased to be. But it still haunted Hux in his dreams.

 

Though he experienced both situations in his sleep equally as often, he couldn’t decide which was worse: seeing Starkiller burn from above, or being on the surface when she went up in blazing glory. When he dreamt he was in space - staring down at the destruction below, safely from the bridge of the Finalizer - he was always alone. Devastated, gutted to the very core, Hux would fall to his knees, openly weeping at the loss of his greatest weapon; he would scream and cry and pound the floor in sheer agony, knowing that no one else could possibly take the blame for it. That was what made this dream so utterly unbearable: though he felt no physical pain, the abhorrence of Starkiller’s sudden death twisted and ripped his very soul from his body, because her death meant his own was not far behind. There was no coming back from something like this. Snoke would make him pay with the only things he had left - his own flesh and blood.

 

At least when he dreamt he was on Starkiller’s surface - burning alive, full of blaster holes, exhausted to the bone by cold and sorrow - he was never alone. Like what had happened in the real event, Ren was always there: bloodied and defeated, laying by Hux’s side in the ash-smudged snow. Sometimes, he was awake, though he never spoke. Other times, he was unconscious, marred face looking serene and at peace with impending death. At least, in this type of dream, Hux knew that the end was coming. He would die when Starkiller blew, not having to face anyone for his failure. There were no questions, no uncertainties. He would die, and he would be at peace with it.

 

But the pain - it was always so bright, so  _ real _ . He would be alive just long enough to bear witness until Starkiller began to explode, feeling the fire eat him alive and incinerate him down to his marrow before he jerked awake, gasping for air, skin alight with both fever and fear.

 

This was one of those times. Hux found himself in the grips of it once again, bleeding profusely into the snow as the climax arrived; the ground ruptured beneath him, sending him plunging into the hellfire below. Hux screamed, reaching out into the empty air around him as if there were something he could hold on to to stop his fall. He realized it was Ren he was searching for when he is no longer to be found. He fell instead - is still  _ falling, falling, falling into fire _ -

 

Until a boot jammed itself into his side, startling him awake.

 

Hux’s eyes snapped open, and he sat up in a rush. Shell-shocked and half-aware, he desperately searched his surroundings to try and get his bearings once more; with a sigh of relief, he discovered he was lying on the floor of the shuttle’s cargo bay, curled up on his greatcoat in the same spot he’d laid down on some odd hours ago. The only difference was that now, Ren was also on the floor, lying on the other side of the shuttle - propped up on his side, staring at Hux like he was the new star attraction of the intergalactic freak show. One leg was stretched out from his sudden, rude kicking.

 

“What was  _ that _ for?” Hux snarled, voice husky and sleep-slurred.

 

“You were dreaming,” Ren said, as if that explained all the questions in the world. He rolled over, going from propped up on his side to laying flat on his back. In the dim glow emitting from the cockpit’s control panel, Hux could see Ren’s eyes were closed, his face smooth and calm; it took him a moment to realize that Ren was attempting to lay down and sleep, instead of just resting.

 

Hux rubbed at his eyes, clearing his vision so he could glare at Ren more forcefully. “And?”

 

Ren’s eyes peeled open again, one eyebrow cocked in irritation. He didn’t turn to Hux when he replied coolly, “ _ And _ , you think louder when you dream. It gets a little distracting.”

 

“Stay out of my head, then.” Hux stifled a yawn, then slowly settled back down onto his makeshift bed on the floor. His greatcoat was warm and soft from being lain on for so long, and the shuttle was blissfully dark and quiet; his eyelids were heavy once more, breathing and heart rate steadied enough to drift peacefully out of awareness.

 

Just as he felt himself slipping, his eyes snapped wide open.

 

“Ren?”

 

A grunt came as Ren’s reply.

 

“Ren, when did we land?”

 

A long, drawn out sigh, and then: “We didn’t, General.”

 

Hux bolted upright again, heart flying to his throat as he scrambled to his feet. Grabbing his greatcoat, he hastily tossed it over his shoulders before tearing his way into the cockpit. “What do you  _ mean, _ we didn’t land?”

 

Ren did not elect to answer, but by then, he didn’t have to.

 

The open expanse of some foreign solar system lay before him, glittering and glistening in the darkness that opened up beyond the shuttle’s windshield. They were drifting slowly through space; far away in the distance, Hux could see planets and stars galore, too far to reach but close enough to admire. A single green light pulsed rhythmically on the shuttle control panel, a signal that some operation or function of the ship was still running even though no one was at the helm.

 

“Autopilot,” Hux whispered to himself. Then louder, to Ren: “This rickety old thing has autopilot?”

 

Ren shuffled around on the floor, making himself comfortable amid his nest of dark shrouds and cape scraps. His reply was delayed as he took the time to yawn dramatically - as if to emphasize that he really did intend to nod off, and Hux was meddling at such an inopportune time. “It didn’t,” he muttered, “until I fixed it yesterday.”

 

“You -  _ you _ fixed it? Hells, Ren. How?” Hux was beginning to hate the man less and less, each time he proved himself to be actually useful. Brutish and irrational as he was, Ren did have some redeeming qualities when he wasn’t throwing a tantrum.

 

“I’ve spent plenty of time around faulty machines,” Ren said, voice low and quiet. “It’s hard to forget.”

 

The way he said it - so solemnly, almost reverently - made Hux raise an eyebrow. There was something else that Ren couldn’t forget, and it certainly wasn’t the machinery.

 

Ever since that day in the cantina - since the day Hux had saved Ren’s life, while also putting them in danger once more by killing a man in the great wide open - Ren had been different. He was always quiet and brooding, but now he seemed to have taken it to a whole new level. This was the lengthiest conversation they’d held in the longest of times; before tonight, Hux’s biting remarks would only earn him a scowl at most, leaving him practically conversing with himself.

 

The worst part was how  _ watchful _ he had become. Looking over his shoulder all the time, dark, expressive eyes falling on Hux whenever some other matter wasn’t more pressing. It happened everywhere they went: planet after planet, hiding in dark alleys and desolate forests when they stopped to resupply; flying in open space, on the edge of their seats while sneaking out of Rebel-occupied quadrants; and even in the dead of night, when Hux woke up to trade off their scheduled surveillance routine. Hux caught Ren watching him every time, and though he had yet to say anything, it made his skin crawl. 

 

He hovered too, always within sight, if not within reach - a moody black shadow to accompany Hux. Ren was expecting something of him, Hux just knew it. Watching, waiting for something to happen - for him to do  _ something _ , though what exactly that was, Hux didn’t have a clue.

 

Hux didn’t dwell on it. No matter how shifty or shady Ren had been since that night at the cantina, he had at least granted Hux what he had owed him: he did not leave Hux behind. He had never even mentioned it again. Hux had not bothered to pursue the issue.

 

Now, Hux felt like pushing some buttons. Groggy and half-focused as he gazed out at the empty patch of space before him, his brain didn’t bother to filter out anything that might get him killed for saying it. “I guess that makes sense, now that I think about it,” he mused, not talking loudly but knowing that Ren was perfectly capable of hearing him. If his ears didn’t catch it, his eavesdropping Force consciousness certainly would. “I’m sure you saw it a lot, what with Han Solo being your father and all.”

 

“He is  _ not _ my father.” Ren’s growled reply was fiercer than Hux expected in the middle of the night, but it was nowhere near the full brunt of his anger. 

 

“Right,” Hux added sarcastically. “And I’m Grand Moff Tarkin.”

 

Hux flinched as something went sailing through the air toward him, but relaxed when it harmlessly thumped against his arm and fell limply to the floor - a small scrap of cloth, flung by Ren from his makeshift bed. Apparently he had little ill will to bear, at least not when he was half asleep.

 

“Besides,” Ren mumbled darkly, “he’s dead now anyway.”

 

Hux risked a glance back at him, no longer wanting to pick and poke at Ren’s emotions when they suddenly turned this sour. “That’s right,” he murmured, chewing pensively on his bottom lip. “You killed him, didn’t you?”

 

Hux could just barely make out Ren nodding in the darkness.

 

“Hmm.” Hux turned back to face the control panel, sucking his teeth as he pondered this. “That’s cold blooded, Ren. Even I wouldn’t have the guts to do it, no matter how much I despised my father. And trust me - I kriffing  _ hated _ that man.”

 

“ _ He’s not my father. _ ”

 

Hux let out a humorless laugh. “Whatever you say, Ren.”

 

Ren, as usual, dissolved back into brooding silence. Settling deeper into his co-pilot chair, Hux wrapped his greatcoat tighter around his body to keep out the subtle chill that permeated the shuttle. He was more comfortable than he had been on the floor, but all sleepiness suddenly had evaded his body and mind; he also wasn’t satisfied with Ren’s feeble attempt at answers, and frankly, his lack of reaction to Hux’s prodding. Staying up and bothering him seemed more entertaining than sleeping.

 

“Why did you do it?” Hux asked, alluding to Ren’s killing of Han Solo without saying it outright.

 

Ren was silent for a long while. “Snoke’s orders,” he finally admitted, voice half-muted by the fabric he had burrowed under. “He told me it would make me stronger.”

 

At that, Hux looked back at Ren once more, this time more in pity and confusion instead of a playful mockery to egg him on. Hux had never been afraid to admit that the Force was a mystery to him - it was a mystery to most people, a nonsensical myth that defied all logic and reason whatsoever - but when the words tumbled out of Ren’s mouth, his thoughts automatically jumped straight past  _ mysterious _ to  _ silly _ . Hux never thought he would have come to this, but after hearing Ren had killed his own father in an attempt to master the darkest form of an exclusive, mystic sorcery, he seriously felt pity for the other man.

 

Kark it if he’d ever show it, though.

 

“Did it work?” Hux found himself asking, hiding the pity with morbid curiosity.

 

Hux did not honestly expect an answer. Though Ren showed no outward signs of being irritated, other than his long delays in between replying, the man did have to have some sort of breaking point. A question about whether or not murder had helped fix all Ren’s magical-related problems was bound to get him strangled to death tonight. Not that either of them was a stranger to murder - they’d thrived off it, up until the events of Starkiller - but patricide was bound to have hit a nerve or two.

 

Which was why Hux was so surprised to hear Ren’s calm, but sad, voice in his head.

 

_ What do you think? _

 

Hux had to stifle a gasp; he looked away, turning the breath caught in his throat into a sigh. Leave it to Ren to tug on his empathy, what little of it that he had in his hardened soul. There was nothing that he could say in this moment - nothing that would make Ren feel better, and make the moment less awkward than it had become. Hux wasn’t good at comforting others. He’d never felt enough connection to another being, never been close enough. Ren certainly didn’t qualify as a friend, or even an acquaintance. Hux had no clue how to help, and he wasn’t entirely sure that it was his job to be concerned anyway.

 

Hux stayed quiet instead. So did Ren.

 

Minutes ticked by. Hux stared out at the glittering stars, felt the gentle motion of the shuttle as it moved silently through open space; they were nearing a planet at last, thought it was still a long ways off at the pace the autopilot had set. Ren was shifting once more in the back, letting out a soft groan as he turned over on his side to face away from Hux - a clear signal that it was time for resting now, and for deep conversation later.

 

“Ren?” Hux asked softly, squeezing in his final words before it was too late. “With the autopilot on, you really didn’t need to wake me. Did you?”

 

But Ren was already asleep.

 

\---

 

When Hux woke up, Ren was seated beside him.

 

The sky before them was no longer dark, replaced by a hazy blue atmosphere that cast a glowing aura around the planet they were rapidly descending upon. It looked remarkably populated - the exact opposite of the last few they had happened upon, and especially surprising since the antisocial Kylo Ren had purposely piloted them here. Hux tapped the holonav, and a diagram of the quadrant popped up: they were in the Coruscant system, about to land on a minor merchant planet.

 

“I don’t want to, but I suppose I should,” Ren said out of nowhere, his voice sounding rough and unused from going so long in complete silence. Hux glanced over at him - saw him adjusting their trajectory with the toggle, hitting a few buttons with the other hand. “And not that you deserve it, either, seeing as how you only got me to talk through your own sick fascination. But.” Ren swallowed thickly, as if the words were clogging up his throat. “I will admit that… it was not a mistake to give in to the pressure.”

 

“Ren, I haven’t the foggiest what you’re-” Huz froze, cutting himself off when the realization dawned upon him. “Wait. Are you… are you thanking me?”

 

A muscle jumped in Ren’s jaw as he clenched it, but he kept staring forward.

 

“You’re thanking me,” Hux stated, more to get it through his own head than to confirm that was really what Ren was doing. “For making you open up.  _ Kriff _ , Ren, I’m not your bloody counselor-”

 

“Which is why it won’t happen again,” Ren interjected, seething, “so don’t expect it to. And you’d best forget it ever happened in the first place. Or else.”

 

“Or else what?”

 

As the shuttle began to vibrate, shaking lightly with the force of entering the atmosphere, Ren turned his sharp glare on Hux. “Do I have to spell it out?”

 

Hux rolled his eyes, so used to Ren’s threats by this point that it did nothing but irritate him. It was safe to say that he wasn’t scared of Ren anymore after being treated so brutally by him: Force choked and manhandled, thrown into walls, strangled, what have you. All that was left was for Ren to just kill him - and really, Hux couldn’t see why that wouldn’t be relief. 

 

“Well, if you really are thanking me, then…” He gripped the edges of his seat as the ride down to the surface grew rougher. “Then I suppose I should say you’re welcome.”

 

Ren winced, obviously uncomfortable with making pleasantries, but still nodded. 

 

It was very obvious, to both men involved, that nothing in their life had ever revolved around being nice - seeing as how neither of them were very good at it. They knew how to be cordial, but that was the extent to which their hardened personalities allowed them to break the mold. Their bodies were hardwired for insults and injuries, for stabbing backs and pulling teeth; nothing in their systems had known what kindness was like, even in the smallest of amounts. It was a disturbing reality to stumble upon - a strange feeling, like trying to smile pleasantly with a mouth full of sharp teeth. 

 

“One more thing,” Ren said as they broke through the atmosphere. “This  _ does not _ make us friends.”

 

Hux didn’t answer. He wanted to, though; anything to keep Ren talking. 

 

The sharp teeth weren’t so bad once they were bared.


	6. Chapter Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note:
> 
> Sorry I've been gone for so long. Moving out, new job schedule, and lots of other strange life experiences have taken place in the last month or so, and I just haven't had any time (or internet) to post lately. But now that everything is a bit more settled, we should be back to our regularly scheduled program. Expect weekly updates from me until the end - and then some. 
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me, you lovely lot :) 
> 
> \- mercy

“Kriff, Ren, what did you do _now_?”

 

A cloaked Hux peeled away from the shadows between two grimy buildings, taking in the scene of complete chaos that lay before him. The shuttle’s engine hatch was propped open, leaving the ship’s insides spewing out all over the ground in front of it. In the middle of all the mess of metal parts and oil puddles and rags, sat Ren, a part in one hand and some kind of wrench in the other.

 

“ _I_ didn’t do anything,” Ren answered, rocking up on his heels to crouch amongst the disarray. His shirt had been tossed aside, and a light sheen of sweat covered his muscled torso; when he turned to glance over at Hux, Hux saw he had a smudge of grease across the right side of his face, mirroring the saber scar that ran down his left. “The engine, however, can speak for itself.”

 

Hux crept forward, peering in at the mess to see if he could tell what exactly had gone wrong. In the time that he had been gone - a swift trip to the crowded local market for bread and other foodstuffs, wrapped up in Ren’s tattered cloak to maintain his anonymity - Ren had practically disassembled the entire engine, leaving bits and pieces still in place like a gap-toothed grin. The engine’s configuration made no sense to Hux, but to mechanically-trained Ren, he assumed it looked like a puzzle, with certain pieces fitting perfectly into place. At least, that was what Hux hoped - otherwise, they would be stuck here for a lot longer than expected until Ren could fit it back together.

 

“What’s not working?” Hux asked, tiptoeing through the minefield of engine bits. “It was fine when I left.”

 

It was Hux’s first solo outing since the fall of Starkiller. Ren had raised no issues about letting him venture out by himself, knowing that Hux was not only perfectly capable of holding his own, but also aware that he had nowhere to go if he decided to abandon Ren. Still, as Hux had turned and melted into the shadows, he felt Ren’s Force consciousness cling to the back of his mind for as long as it could until he was out of range. Always watching him, always aware of his movements.

 

“Hyperdrive was ticking. It’s driving me crazy.” Ren turned his attention back to the engine bay, poking his head into one of the larger empty cavities and. Hux inched forward, leaning up against the side of the shuttle to try and catch a glimpse of its complex inner workings, as well as keep talking to Ren. “I thought I’d try and adjust it, but it, uh… It didn’t agree with my plans.”

 

“What an eloquent way to say you broke something,” Hux remarked. Ren scoffed in reply.

 

Although Ren had previously clarified that they certainly were _not friends_ , there did seem to be a fair amount less of animosity between the two men. A monotone rapport had built up over time, breaking down the barriers and seeping into the realm of natural conversation. They even went as far as to joke with one another once in a great while - though their idea of a joke was more or less taking verbal jabs at one another, nothing overly harmful, but nothing that one would categorize as being nice. It was just as well, though; even the cruelest of caricatures deserved to have a laugh.

 

It was six months since Starkiller now, and they had become wholly and entirely unrecognizable as their former selves: a lot thinner, a lot more haggard, their faces more scarred and sallow. Ren’s hair had grown out, gracefully brushing his shoulders, while Hux’s once neat coif had turned into a messy red mop atop his head. Hux did his best to keep his face clean shaven, in need of some semblance of neatness in his daily life, but Ren’s features slowly disappeared underneath a dark beard. They were officially General and Knight no more - they were strangers, anonymous nomads with ties to no people, no planet.

 

Hux was glad that they had so seamlessly transitioned into anonymity. He still wondered, though, what others saw when they looked at the two of them. Not who they were to the world, but instead, who they were to one another. He hoped, at least, they thought they were companions. Friends, even.

 

It was a far-fetched hope. Still, it was his to keep.

 

“Did you see any spare parts stands at the market?” Ren popped his head out from inside the shuttle, pulling something out of the ship’s innards as he went. He held it up in front of his face and inspected it intensely: a tiny, dented metal thing that Hux could only assume was the malfunctioning piece of the hyperdrive that Ren had subsequently wrecked.

 

“Yes, but I doubt they cater to First Order needs here,” Hux complained, crossing his arms over his chest. He peeled the cloak’s cowled hood back, the planet’s hot sun making his skin bead up with sweat.

 

Ren rolled one shoulder in a halfhearted shrug. “I can make it work,” he answered nonchalantly, turning the part over and over again in his grease-stained hands. “Any kind will do, as long as it’s about the same size.”

 

“Look at you, the magical mechanic,” Hux half-joked, halk mocked. “At least your old man Han Solo was good for one thing in his lifetime.”

 

Ren glared up at him. Hux flinched away, expecting the worst - Ren always had devastating reactions to the mention of the family he’d left behind, usually reactions of the violent and injurious kind - but instead, no violence came. Ren just continued to glare at him, lip curled in distaste. “Not my father,” he grumbled under his breath; Hux just rolled his eyes.

 

The sun was lowering across the sky, sinking its way down from high noon as the day began to dwindle. “Come on, let’s go,” Ren said, taking note of how little time they had left until the cool night was upon them; he swiftly got to his feet and put his discarded shirt back on. When he wandered past Hux, he ripped the cloak off from around his neck, using the rough material to wipe the grease from his hands.

 

Hux didn’t realize he was watching Ren clean himself off until Ren stopped doing it, looking at him quizzically with one eyebrow quirked. “Need something, General?”

 

Hux froze, scrambling to save himself the minute the mortification began to set in. “You’ve got some oil on your ridiculously oversized nose, Ren.”

 

Ren eyes glared, but the edge of his mouth turned up. He wiped his face without breaking eye contact, making Hux both unnerved and thrilled down to his bones.

 

“Alright, let’s get going,” Ren declared, rolling his shoulders in a halfhearted warm-up move as he prepared to depart for the market. As he strode past Hux, wasting no time to lead the way, he suddenly stopped as if he had forgotten something very important. Confused, Hux glanced him over, wondering what he could have missed: he was dressed, his boots were laced, he was free from grease, and his lightsaber was tucked covertly underneath his loose-fitting shirt. Hux had the money, so it couldn’t have been that. “Oh. Here.” Ren reached back and dropped the tiny metal part into Hux’s palm, his callused fingers brushing Hux’s fair skin. “Don’t lose that.”

 

Hux stared down at the part, feeling his hand tingle where Ren touched it. Only then did he trail after Ren.

 

\---

 

“You’re hovering, Ren.”

 

“You walk slow,” Ren replied, somewhere close over Hux’s shoulder.

 

The market was crowded, swirling and buzzing with even more people than had been here earlier that day; Hux was not fond of this place, even less so on his second go around. Ren, however, seemed to enjoy it - he glanced around curiously at nearly everything they wandered past, pointing out little objects he found amusing or thought might be useful. He enjoyed the oddities of people the place had to offer, too, poking fun at . All the while, Ren hung around Hux like a scarf tied around his neck: behind him, at his side, in front of him, anywhere but at a distance. Keeping a close eye, as always - Hux could feel that stare on him, even when he didn’t look to check.

 

Eventually, they ended up near the parts section of the enormous bazaar. Hux walked in front, with Ren at his back - _close_ at his back, like a cat with its claws dug in. Like a child trailing after its caretaker. “See anything yet?” Hux asked, hoping that the answer was yes.

 

“No,” Ren answered. “Not yet.”

 

They kept walking. Hux pushed forward through the ebb and flow of the crowd, edging his way into pockets no bigger than the size of his own body. When he reached the middle of the dirt-paved walkway, the steady stream of shoppers seemed to dissipate, leaving a wide open space in which to wade through without brushing up against another person or

 

“You’re not just hovering, Ren,” Hux pointed out exasperatedly, “but now you’re _touching_ me.”

 

“Maybe if you moved along a little faster, Hux,” Ren snipped , jabbing a finger into Hux’s back to punctuate his sentence, “then I wouldn’t need to.”

 

Hux’s eye’s rolled, but his chest warmed at Ren’s playfulness. He suddenly didn’t mind that the bazaar was full to the brim with prying eyes and ears - if the passersby didn’t think they were willing companions before, they certainly did now. No, he did not mind at all.

 

At last, their aimless wandering seemed to find its course, and they were surrounded on all sides by tables filled with odds and ends that looked like they could belong to every mechanical commodity imaginable. Hux was far less versed in the mechanical arts than Ren - at least when it came to the realm of junk bots and outdated ships, something befitting of a Solo origin story - so he let Ren charge ahead and start fawning over the wide expanse of metal and plasteel, scanning intently like a bird of prey for the tiny replacement part.

“I’m out of my depth,” Hux admitted, though really, he was just already bored. “Mind if I explore while you reminisce, young Solo?”

 

“I’ll be here,” Ren said absently, too engrossed in his hunt to catch the jab; he waved his hand dismissively, leaving Hux free to wander.

 

So he did. Without glancing back to so much as nod at Ren, or to tell him where he was headed off to, Hux simply edged his way along the tablefuls of wares, inspecting the trinkets and oddities with a passive sweep of his vision. Nothing caught his eye, so he kept perusing downward; Ren would notice if he got too far out of Force range, so Hux felt perfectly content on wandering as far as he pleased until he found something at least mildly worth his attention. If Ren got to have fun browsing the oddities, then so did he - and entirely on his own.

 

Down the wide bazaar aisle, Hux spotted something that looked like a table full of handheld screens - oh hells, did he miss his datapad, and kark it if he wouldn’t barter for a new one just for the feeling of something familiar - and began to meander down to them. But the moment he wove through the crowd, a hooded figure popped up out of nowhere and stood in his way. Gnarled, slender hands poked out from under the cloak, and long, ragged hair tumbling out from under the hood indicated it was an elderly humanoid woman. She stood stock-still, seemingly lost or transfixed. Hux attempted to slide around her, politely adding as he went by, “Excuse me-”

 

One of the gnarled hands shot out toward him as he tried to squeeze around her, trapping him much faster than he would have thought possible for a shriveled old thing like her. “Your friend,” the old hag crooned to him, pointing a withered, crooked finger past Hux. When he glanced back, he saw she was gesturing toward Ren, focused on something else across the way but still lingering close by. “He stays close always, yes?”

 

“He’s not-” Hux shook his head fervently as he turned back to the old crone, “He’s not my friend. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have business to attend to.”

 

With the wrinkled black hood she wore, the woman’s face was almost entirely hidden in shadows of black and grey; but at Hux’s hasty answer, she tilted her head back, revealing just a sliver of her ancient looking face. Her sunken-in eyes shone an unsettling, sickly shade of yellow, piercing straight through Hux to his very soul. “That is not the question I asked, pretty boy.”

 

Hux wanted to retort that he wasn’t a _boy_ , and he certainly wasn’t anything near _pretty_ , but instead he frowned deeply and took a step away from the woman. Her eyes tracked him as he moved, unblinking and impossibly wide. From the uneasy feeling that was slowly filling the pit of his stomach, he knew it was time he and Ren get moving along. They had avoided conflict for months, but had they perhaps gotten too comfortable? Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Ren was still close, but bargaining intensely over some hunk of metal in his hands - a new part for the shuttle, no doubt. _Kark the junk, Ren_ , he thought urgently to Ren, _we’ve been here far too long._

 

Ren did not answer, or act like he’d even heard. Hux found himself frozen on the spot.

 

“Yes, he does,” Hux admitted. His voice lowered automatically, so as not to let Ren hear that he was conversing about him with a stranger. “Why?”

 

“ _Why_ , you ask me,” the old woman mused; her long, yellow nails clicked together as she gestured about wildly, as if the words coming out of Hux’s mouth were complete and utter nonsense. “What do you mean, _why_? Why, as in why do I ask you this? Or why, as in why does he linger at your back like a shadow?”

 

Taken aback and becoming more confused by this mysterious old hag than he would ever admit, Hux glanced away and took another step back as if to suddenly turn and run. Talking with strangers had always made him nervous - but decrepit crones with beady eyes who tried to befuddle you by practically talking in riddles? This day in the market was suddenly turning into a bizarre fable he would have been told his childhood, one that didn’t end so well for anyone involved.

 

But Hux couldn’t help himself. As apprehensive as he was, the old woman didn’t seem likely to hurt him. She was just strange - strange, and remarkably nosy.

 

“If you’re suggesting that you know the answer,” he dared, “then tell me. Why does he follow me so close?”

 

Hux knew that as soon as the words left his mouth, he would regret ever speaking them at all. Within moments, the old woman’s piercing gaze turned mischievous; she shuffled forward, her slow, lopsided gait adding even more mystery and unsettledness to this entire mess. Hux groaned internally, wishing desperately that Ren would hurry up with whatever he was doing, and they could get the hells out of here. As the hag began to wander away, he felt he had no choice but to follow.

 

“You know a _paradox_ , yes?” she asked, her pace picking up as she stepped around Hux and began fiddling with metal and glass things on the table beside them as she went. His brain finally registering her question - of course he knew what a kriffing paradox was, he wasn’t an imbecile - Hux nodded sharply. The woman continued, “You ask me why this man does these things, and yet, you know already know why.”

 

Hux could have laughed. That statement was hardly qualified to be a paradox (the wording really made it more of a rhetorical question, didn’t it?) nor did it make any sense to him. Hux was a smart, no-nonsense kind of man - if he knew the answer to Ren’s mysterious behavior already, then why ever did he need ask?

 

But he didn’t laugh, or find it half as amusing as he should’ve. Something began screaming _warning!_ in his core. “If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking,” he replied. “Tell me. Please.”

 

Hux may have let out no laughter - but the woman did. The old crone let out a sharp bark of amusement, making those that milled about closest to them in the wading crowd jump and startle as if she had screamed instead. There was a deep bitterness to that laugh, a mocking edge, but it only lasted for a moment before it dissolved into thin air. She turned back to pin him in place with her sharp gaze. Her eyes twinkled with manic knowledge - or perhaps just plain old mania, but of an infuriatingly captivating kind. With her piercing look came an odd sensation at Hux’s forehead - like her eyes were going right through to his brain. It made him squirm, but he didn’t dare move a muscle.

 

There was a tickle at the back of his head just then; an itch, an uncomfortable sensation that made him want to dig at the inside of his skull. Recognizing it, Hux whipped his head around and saw Ren standing like a statue amidst the waxing and waning crowd. He was staring right at Hux, brown eyes not alarmed, but on the very edge of alertness. He’d heard Hux’s cry for help after all- precisely when Hux didn’t want him to. Hux silently prayed for another minute more before Ren swooped in to his rescue.

 

“Please,” Hux begged impatiently, grabbing the woman by the arm and giving her a swift but threatening shake, “before he comes back. Tell me.”

 

The old woman considered him. She peered over Hux’s shoulder, eyes locking on Ren, who stared concernedly at Hux’s back. He hadn’t made another move forward since he’d noticed the disturbance, but he had been brought back to full awareness - ready to descend on a moment’s notice if needed. Hux desperately wanted to wave him off, needing to hear what this woman said more than he needed air or water to survive. Instead of paying attention to Ren, he stared down at the woman expectantly.

 

Her eyes flicked back to him, boring straight down to his soul. She did not laugh anymore. “You _do_ already know, pretty boy,” she crooned, softly, sweetly. “You think he is wary of you, that he turns his eyes to you as if you are ready to strike. As if you are ready to run away, and he is to keep you on a leash. But this… This is not the truth. This is not why he does this.”

 

“Then _why_?” Hux whispered.

 

“Because he _sees_ you,” she whispered back.

 

It was a simple sentence, and upon hearing it, Hux didn’t have a clue as to what it meant. But as the realization of what she meant dawned on him, delivering a blow to his chest as if he’d been shot with her words, he let go of his tight grip on her as quickly as though he’d been burned. Stepping back, suddenly feeling chilled down to every last bone, Hux turned his back on the woman and walked away without a glance back. Her piercing gaze followed him, clinging tighter with each step.

 

_It’s not true_ , he tried to reassure himself as he found his way back to Ren.   _She’s insane. Or she’s just far too observant - she read into what you were already thinking. Yes, that’s it. Nothing more..._

 

Ren was busy exchanging credits, with the exact part he needed resting in his palm, when Hux charged up to him. “Is that all?” Hux asked, feeling twitchy; he wanted to run back to the shuttle and fly away from this karking place as fast as he could.

 

“Yes, that’s it,” Ren replied, looking taken aback by Hux’s abrupt arrival, as well as a smidge indignant that he hadn’t gotten the chance to interrupt Hux. “What happened-”

 

“Let’s go,” Hux snapped, blowing past Ren and charging onward.

 

Ren had no choice but to follow.

 

\---

“Something on your mind, General?”

 

Hux jumped, startled out of the dark cavern of his thoughts and brought back to the present. They were back in the cockpit, watching the Coruscant System sun begin to set through the shuttle window. Ren had fixed the hyperdrive - it had taken him little to no time at all to get the makeshift hyperdrive piece to work, mostly due to Hux’s lack of comments on his Solo blood being the only reason he was good at it - and was now draped across the pilot seat, long fingers toying nimbly with the old broken part.

 

“Nothing,” Hux was quick to say, before sighing, then backtracking. Ren hadn’t been in his mind yet, but would find out what happened when he rifled through there sometime soon anyway - it was better to tell him straight out instead of keeping it from him. “Well… not _nothing_ , exactly.”

 

Ren didn’t speak, but a silent _obviously_ hung in the air between them.

 

“There was a woman,” Hux said at last. “An old woman. At the market.”

 

Ren raised an eyebrow, but didn’t turn his head to look at Hux. “I saw. What was she trying to sell you?”

 

“Nothing, actually. She was just… strange. Beyond strange, really.” Hux squirmed in his seat, uncomfortable even know just recalling the encounter. “She came up to me and started... asking me questions.”

 

“Questions like what?” Ren was fiddling with the broken hyperdrive part in his hands, absently carrying on the conversation while he picked at rust and grease spots on it. “She wasn’t Rebel or FO, was she?”

 

“No, no. Of course not.”

 

Ren’s shoulders relaxed, tension Hux hadn’t realized had gathered up falling away. Distractedly, Ren chewed on a broken edge of his fingernail while he set the part off to the side in the cockpit. “What did she ask, if it wasn’t that?”

 

Hux didn’t know how to answer. He still wasn’t entirely comprehending what she’d  him, and the encounter had already been over with for nearly an hour. Well, he _was_ comprehending it - but there was no way he was understanding it the way that she’d meant it. His foolish hope clouded his judgement.

 

“She asked me,” he finally said, “about you. About… _us_ , I suppose. Though I can scarcely imagine why she bothered asking... she seemed as if she knew everything already-”

 

“Wait,” Ren interjected, a sudden fire lighting up his eyes as he turned sharply to look at Hux. Reaching out and grabbing Hux’s arm roughly, he demanded, “What do you mean _she knew everything already_? What did she know about me? About us?”

“I - I don’t know,” Hux stammered, more jarred by Ren’s electrifying grip on him than by the fact that he was being nearly screamed at when Ren had spoken so calmly only a moment ago. “She asked me about you - mostly just you. Why you hover so close, why you’re so watchful, what it is that you’re waiting for me to do or say. Like I said, I don’t know why she bothered to ask. She answered all of her own questions like she was reading my mind-”

 

“Hux, you should have told me right away!” Ren exclaimed, only now, he seemed more invigorated than angry. “Do you have any idea what this means?” When Hux fervently shook his head no, Ren busted out a windy, half-crazy sounding laugh. “That means she’s a _Force user_ , Hux. She _was_ reading your mind, your feelings, your emotions - the same way that I do.” Ren finally released him, his hands flying instead to the control panel of the shuttle, fingers flitting over the buttons and levers as he practically startled the aircraft into awakening.

 

“Ren, what are you doing?” Hux cried out, nearly sliding from his seat as the ship gave a sickening lurch forward and upward.

 

“I’m taking us back to the market, Hux,” Ren replied. “We need to find her again.”

 

“For what?” Hux cried out, but his voice was lost in the roar of the engine.

 

Ren’s hulking body was hunched forward over the control panel, leaning into the speeding motion of the shuttle’s bumpy flight pattern. They weaved in and out of streets and traffic, hitting rough pockets of air that caused Hux to gasp in panic. He had grown used to Ren’s less-than-polished piloting skills, but this newfound sense of urgency that Ren possessed was adding another layer of danger to the mix.

 

Hux had a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach, as if he knew that whatever Ren was hoping to find out, he wouldn’t be able to get. Call it a gut feeling, a premonition - or perhaps he was somehow developing Force senses of his own. But he didn’t say anything. Hux clamped his mouth shut, stared straight ahead, and hung on for dear life.

 

\---

 

She wasn’t there.

 

As dusk had descended on the merchant planet, all vibrant signs of life vanished from the once-packed streets. All that remained at the market were empty tables and tents - the ghosts of bundles and bargains that Ren tore out of the shuttle as soon as it had landed, desperate in his search for one of his own kind; Hux stayed behind, too dumbfounded and guilt-ridden to even move from the co-pilot seat.

 

He had nearly convinced himself that the whole encounter was imagined: some bizarre kind of daydream, a waking nightmare his brain had mysteriously conjured up in broad daylight. The woman wasn’t real, the conversation wasn’t real, _none_ of it was real. It had seemed too strange to exist in this reality - and how he longed to throw himself at Ren’s feet and tell him that it wasn’t.

 

Hux _knew_ there would be no one there. But he did not tell Ren. Whether to save his own skin, or to spare Ren’s feelings - it was impossible to say why. But he didn’t say a word.

 

The shuttle door slid open behind him, agonizingly slow. Hux kept his mouth screwed shut as he feared the worst - his throat constricted painfully, heart nearly sputtering to a halt when Ren’s heavy boots fell step by step against the floor. He dared not glance over as the man slid into the pilot seat, ominously silent and devoid of his usual rage. Out of the corner of his eye, Hux could see Ren staring straight forward, but felt the pressure of the Force consciousness at the base of his skull; Ren was glaring without eyes, placing all the blame for this failed mission of his on Hux.

 

“I’m sorry,” was all Hux could say, and he really meant it.

 

Ren said nothing for the rest of the night.

 

\---

 

Hux was used to Ren waking him up at night, startling him back into awareness when he found himself in the grips of a night terror. Though Ren always gave his own reasons for rousing him - _your dreams are ten times louder than your normal thoughts, Hux_ was the most common one - based on what the old woman had crooned to him earlier, he now wondered if he had been waking Hux up for an entirely different reason.

 

What he _wasn’t_ used to was being woken like this, with Ren being the one dreaming.

 

Hux had been lounging in the co-pilot seat, eyes flitting open and closed as he neared sleep for the hundredth time before his mind yanked him back to awareness. His brain was telling him not to sleep, though his body desperately needed it; even through all his relaxation efforts, something was nagging at him, tearing him away from unconsciousness again and again. It was almost as if there was a door at the back of his mind - and _something_ was knocking on it, banging it down, scratching at the cracks trying to squeeze its way in.

 

Hux was tired, so tired. His eyelids drooped shut. He wanted it to stop - so he let it in.

 

The door opened, and light blazed through.

 

Flashes of color suddenly bloomed across the backs of his eyelids. Blurry faces, cast in sepia - a flickering holofilm of someone else’s life, long since past. Smiling, laughing, crying. Coming close enough to touch; walking away and never looking back.

 

Hux recognized them, one by one: General Leia Organa, smiling down happily, as if looking upon the sweet innocent face of a child; someone he could only guess was Luke Skywalker, standing at a distance, looking far more aged and forlorn than Hux had ever imagined the mythical figure would be; the shadowy visage of Darth Vader, radiating power and superiority; and even the scavenger girl materialized out of thin air, holding a blue lightsaber and looking so terrified and yet so impossibly brave.

 

He knew what he was seeing here. The familial counterparts of Ben Solo - now Kylo Ren. Those he had left behind on his downward spiral of death and destruction.Those he would never return to again.

 

And then, behind them all: the glittering citadel of Coruscant, cast in glows of red and blue. _Lightsabers_ , Hux thought. _Jedi and Sith, eternally at odds._

 

Hux opened his eyes, and found he was staring at Ren’s sleeping face.

 

A shiver crawled its way down the length of his spine; he felt wrong, so wrong. He had seen into Ren’s mind for a change; witnessed the man’s dreams as if they were his own. And something he had been wondering about all this time spent in a busy planet system, suddenly began to make sense. It made him sick to his stomach in a heartbeat.

 

The Coruscant System had belonged to the Jedis once, long long ago. Their reign here had ended before either Ren or Hux were ever born; wiped out, freed from existence. But there had to be some sort of residual energy drifting in the air here - keeping some part of the Force alive in its people.

 

Ren had piloted them here. He had never said why, never had a good reason to give when Hux asked. Hux had always assumed he’d tired of roughing it in the wilderness - an escape to the city for a change of scenery and of pace. And when he had blown up over the disappearance of the strange woman, the one who somehow knew every little thing inside Hux’s mind - he had thought it was just Ren being Ren.

 

He hadn’t thought that Ren was searching for something here. He hadn’t thought that he would be looking for another person like himself.

 

It was plain to see, now that it had been thrown in his face. Hux instantly felt stupid, as well as blind, for not realizing it any sooner than at this very moment. If _Hux_ had thought he was alone in the universe, he couldn’t even begin to imagine how Ren felt. How dire, how _dreadful_ , to grow used to this power that resides inside one’s own bones - and then be so alone in your journey through life with it? There were so few people left in the universe that could tap into the Force - up until that fateful day on Starkiller when the scavenger girl has appeared, Hux had thought Ren and Snoke to be the only ones left. To be so close to meeting another person that understands what it’s like, and to have them slip right through your fingers… Especially when you yourself have had that power made unattainable.

 

Ren was lonely without the Force. Ren was lonely, period. He had thought he’d found a kindred spirit - and then _Hux had kriffing ruined it._

 

For the first time in his life, Hux wanted to do something good. Hux wanted to make the wrong he had done right; he wanted to wake Ren up and tell him he was an awful, no good soul, and that he deserved whatever sort of pain Ren decided to bring down on him. He wanted to commandeer this rusty little vessel of theirs and fly over the whole planet, scouring the surface for that crazy old woman - wanted to make this foul man smile, bare that big mouth full of sharp teeth and never put them back in.

 

More than anything else that he wanted, he wanted this: for what that old woman had said to be true. He wanted to know that yes, Ren _saw_ him, saw him inside and out, and still didn’t want to leave him behind on some worthless Outer Rim world. He _saw_ him, and deemed him worthy of risking life and limb, even without the Force flowing through his veins. He wanted to know that in Hux, he saw a friend. He saw _something_. He wanted to tell Ren that he saw him right back.

 

Instead, he reached out and jostled Ren’s shoulder. With a start, Ren woke up.

 

“What?” Ren asked, blinking in the dark.

 

“You were dreaming,” Hux whispered.

 

\---

 

The next day, it was as if nothing had happened. Not the woman, not the dream - it was all left behind when the sun came up. At least, _Ren_ left it behind; Hux couldn’t stop thinking about it.

 

They had nothing to do, nowhere to go. They’d eaten, drank; they’d gone to market, stocked up on things they needed now and odds and ends they might need later. Ren had fixed the shuttle - _the new part would work just fine for now_ , he’d said, _but any more long trips across space would wear it right down_ \- and was now fixating on the next hideout. He was thinking the Outer Rim again, somewhere quiet where they could lay low for longer than a week or two at a time. Somewhere semi-permanent. But not yet. A few days, maybe, but not quite yet. Until then, they had no plans in place.

 

They had all the time in the world. Time, left to be filled by nothing but thoughts and silence.

 

Hux’s brain went into overdrive, naturally. He tried anything possible to distract  himself: pacing around the shuttle, picking at the dirt and blood under his nails, patching up his worthless old greatcoat, shaving the fresh stubble off his gaunt face. None of it took his mind off what had happened the day before, and what it meant in the grand scheme of things of the days to follow. The only thing he could stand to do was think, and even that, he didn’t really _want_ to do.

 

And Hux could tell that Ren was thinking too. He couldn’t hear or see what was on the other man’s mind - not like the night before, opening the door into Ren’s dreams - but from the silent consternation on Ren’s face throughout the day, and the baleful stares he kept giving Hux when he thought he couldn’t see him, both gave it away. They were both equally as troubled by the inner workings of their minds.

 

As the sun began to lower once more, Ren settled back into the pilot seat, big awkward elbows resting on his knobby knees. Hux was beside him in the co-pilot position, twiddling a popped-off greatcoat button between his fingers idly. “Alright, I’ve had enough,” Ren said suddenly with a sigh. “You’ve got something to say, so just get it over with already. Go on, say it.”

 

Although Ren’s prodding was unexpected, Hux could keep it inside him no longer. He had been waiting to give Ren the same order all day - and about a dozen more, actually - but had found no good time or way to broach it. He’d elected to keep it bottled up for now, but Ren, in the end, always beat him to the punch. Hux was more surprised by the fact that he didn’t just take a peek into his brain, and then ask him _why_ he was thinking those things instead of _what_ he was thinking. How civil of him - actually wanting to have a conversation instead of just taking whatever he wanted.

 

Letting out a frustrated huff of breath, Hux scrubbed at his eyes. “Well,” he answered, too unsure in his own head to know where to start. “There’s… a lot.”

 

Ren hummed in response, as if to say _I’m waiting_ . Hux stared straight ahead, but in his parallels, he saw Ren staring in that same odd way as always - questioning, curious, yet so, _so_ guarded.

 

Hux, ever so frustrated with feeling watched at all times, decided that was where he would start. “You’re doing it,” he said suddenly, head swiveling to meet Ren’s look straight on, “you’re staring at me.”

 

Ren blinked. “What?”

 

“You’ve been staring at me for weeks, _months_ now. Always in that same way. Why? What is it that you’re staring at?”

 

Ren’s mouth opened, and a dumbfounded look crossed his face. But he said nothing.

 

“I don’t get it,” Hux continued, all of his frustrations and wonderings starting to tumble out of his mouth with no filter or controls in place. “After all this time, and you’re still looking at me like I’m going to disappear. Even after all that I’ve done for you, and that you’ve done for me - saving each other’s lives and whatnot. Even after all the chances I’ve been given, all the times I could’ve shot you in your sleep, all the opportunities I’ve had to run away. I haven’t taken any of them, Ren. Because I _don’t want to_ . Is it _that_ impossible to get through your thick skull? I’m not going anywhere, so stop looking at me like I won’t be here when you turn away.”

 

After a long, tense moment silence, Ren’s head tipped back - a half-nod, a symbol of bits and pieces of information finally clicking into place. He stood, taking long, slow steps away from the cockpit, pacing in the cargo bay as he seemingly mulled over Hux’s words. “That’s not why,” Ren finally murmured, pacing coming to a halt. He stood facing the back of the ship, broad shoulders turned away from Hux. His fists were clenched at his sides.

 

Hux threw his hands up in the air. “Then _why_?” he begged.

 

Ren glanced over his shoulder at Hux, dark eyes entirely earnest. Hux’s gut dropped through the shuttle floor.

 

“You’re all wrapped up in your own head, worried about things you don’t get about me. But you never came to the conclusion that there’s something I don’t get about you?” Ren’s odd tone suggested it was a question and a statement all at once. He turned back around to face Hux, and Hux felt the weight of his gaze fall down on him like the entire shuttle had pinned him to the earth. “You killed someone, Hux,” Ren said. “For me.”

 

Hux’s heart stuttered over the words _for me_ , tripping over them like bumps on a footpath. “I owed you a debt,” he answered, trying to keep his voice steady. “That’s just how I chose to pay for it.”

 

“Regardless,” Ren continued; he was standing stock-still, posture rigid and nervous, but his face was more open and unguarded than Hux had ever seen it before. He could hardly stand to look at it. “No one’s ever done that for me before.”

 

Hux suddenly had trouble swallowing, the realization that Ren mistook his act of debt repayment making his words stick in his throat and threaten to choke him. A part of him had worried that saving the man’s life would turn out like this - misconstrued to the point of being taken as an emotional response, rather than a knee-jerk reaction done out of self-preservation. But at the same time, he wasn’t entirely sure who was misconstruing it here - was it Ren, or was it himself? The coiling, burning fear of being left alone at the end of the worlds ignited in his belly again as he recalled shooting the man at the cantina. The pure dread of it - of the thought of seeing a blaster bolt go through Ren’s head or chest, of having to bear witness to the life draining out of a man he’d once thought invincible - made his hands begin to tremble even now after the fact. It was a sick sentiment, a sadistic instinct to want to _kill_ for another man. But it was one that he could hardly deny resided within his soul.

 

No, he could not bear to see Ren die. The imagined event alone was a horror in itself. Hux could not simply brush it off as an act of self-preservation, not when he wasn’t even the one who’d been in danger. And he certainly couldn’t act anymore as if he didn’t care about Ren - not after he’d just spent all these weeks worrying about how others in the universe saw them, if they thought they were close. Not after he’d _hoped_ they really were close.

 

“It was nothing, Ren,” Hux replied, not because it really was nothing, but because he wanted them both to believe that it should be. Caring about another person besides himself was proving to be far too painful; a deep-set ache was forming in the cavity of his chest, and he simply couldn’t bear it. “You would’ve done the same. You _have_ done the same.”

 

Ren shook his head. “Not like that. I’ve saved _us_ \- as in both of us. You… you saved _me_. Just me.”

 

“So karking _get over it_ ,” Hux tried to snarl, but it came out more panicked and exasperated than the anger it was intended to be. Why wouldn’t Ren just let it go? “You’ve repaid your debt, anyway. You didn’t leave me alone at the edge of the pfassking galaxy - that’s all I asked for, so now we’re even. No need to make a fuss.”

 

“But what if there _is_ a need to?” Ren countered, some of that famous fury of his finally starting to seep into his voice; his hands were doing the talking now too, fists clenching and unclenching around air, longing for something to throttle. “Are you that adverse to kindness, that you refuse to even acknowledge that you’re capable of it?”

 

“And what if I am, Ren? It’s not as if I’ve shown it before, much less proven to be an expert on it. I did what I felt I had to do, and that’s all there is to it. No _kindness_ involved.”

 

“That’s _not_ all there is to it, though. You certainly didn’t have to do it, but you still chose to. Whether you like it or not, you have some amount of sympathy in you, no matter how small it may be.”

 

“So that makes you so baffled, so confused, that you have to stare at me like some simple-minded animal, some dumbfounded cretin? Because you don’t understand why I did it, and you think me so absurd and outlandish for doing it? Because if it’s not a big deal to me, then that still gives me the opportunity to slip away into the night and leave, and that scares you?”

 

“ _I told you, Hux_ ,” Ren spat, and his voice - which had grown louder and louder, without Hux realizing it - made the shuttle vibrate with Force-driven echoes. “That isn’t why I keep looking at you.”

 

“ _Then why?_ ” Hux screamed, standing up in a state of absolute rage.

 

The fire was suddenly blown out - in a heartbeat, Ren was calm.

 

Hux could’ve sworn Ren’s face was on the edge of a smile - his gaze sharp, mouth drawn taut against his pale cheeks. Hux realized then that he had never seen Ren smile, not really, and the more naive parts of his brain were afraid that this was the closest he’d ever get. Hux wasn’t shocked when it only lasted for a fleeting moment; Ren’s face turned wholly and entirely solemn once more, brown eyes burning.

 

“Because I _see_ you,” he said simply. “I see you differently than I did before. And I didn’t get it, not for the longest time - I didn’t get _how_ I saw you. But now… I think I finally understand. I get how I see you.”

 

And there it was. The old hag’s exact words, being thrown into Hux’s face by the one person he’d least expected. Hux’s insides churned; his mouth hung open, but he couldn’t even hope to force something out, or even shut it. All he could do was breathe. “What do you mean?” he finally asked.

 

Ren was still watching him, eyes locked on as if he would never look away again. “I didn’t know where to put you,” he said carefully, choosing words in a manner that was so unlike himself. “All my life, I’ve shoved people aside, pushed them away into different facets. It makes it so much easier to think of everyone as either an adversary or an ally, nothing more personal. But you… I’ve never been able to figure out just where you fit in. So much of you was hidden away, so much of you I didn’t know anything about. So much of you that you don’t let anybody have. And just when I thought I had it down, you’d turn around and do something to change my entire perspective of you. It’s taken me all this time, but now, I _see_ you - and I see that you’re so much easier to place, now that I know so much more of you. Now that I know just how _different_ you are.” Ren tore his gaze away, and Hux felt its absence eviscerate him. “That’s why I’ve been watching, and staring, and following you, Hux. I was just - just trying to figure you out.”

 

Hux knew if he could see himself right now, he’d be drained of all color. He felt as if his very soul had escaped his body, driven out by the shock of Ren saying that he’d figured him out; so much of his body and mind had gone numb that he couldn’t even bother to ask where it was in his life that Ren had placed him. It came down to friend or foe - and if Ren was bothering to explain it, Hux would be inclined to guess he’d been chosen as a friend at last. Acceptance from Ren - it was a shot to the guts, but one that Hux would’ve gladly taken ten more of without question nor hesitation.

 

“You said… Different,” Hux repeated Ren’s words softly, finally finding his own voice again after nearly drowning in silence. “in what way?”

 

Ren still did not smile, but his eyes almost glittered. His answer came in Hux’s head.

 

_Different than others,_ he whispered _, but just like me._

 

\---

 

Night had descended. Hux’s chest felt lighter, his brain less weighted. He was tired, but he still couldn’t sleep.

 

Neither could Ren. Together, they stared out into the quiet night.

 

When the fighting was done, it was _done_. No one had spoken a single word since Hux had asked that fateful question, as if breaching the ensuing silence would break some sort of treaty or pact they’d silently agreed to put in place. Shatter it like glass, and ruin everything all over again.

 

Hux didn’t want to fight, not anymore. He just didn’t have it in him. But he had no idea where they were to go from here. So he stayed quiet, and so did Ren.

 

Hux looked over at Ren, and took him in: the long face, that big ugly nose, the overly-expressive eyes and the unruly hair. Even more, he looked at what he knew lay underneath - the roiling emotions and thoughts, the erratic anger and the inexplicable sadness, and added it all up as a sum of his parts. He should have been a repulsive sight, and an even more abhorrent personality - but he wasn’t. Not to Hux. And it wasn’t just because Hux was _different_ in that respect - he’d always been more inclined to his own kind rather than any female counterparts  - but rather, it was the fact that it was _Ren_ who was slowly becoming the object of his utmost affections.

 

Oh, how he had _hated_ Ren, once upon a time. How he had wanted to tear him limb from limb after every tantrum, every failed mission, every order disobeyed. He’d wanted him dead, oftentimes by his own hand - and now? Now he stared at him, unguarded, and thought in all seriousness, that his big nose and even bigger temper weren’t so bad after all. Those rage-red days were not as far away as they felt; how foreign, how unreal, his hatred now seemed.

 

Hux realized that what he was doing now - staring at Ren, adding his puzzle pieces together and taking in the captivating picture they made - was what Ren had been doing to him all along. Even when Ren told him the truth, he still hadn’t really gotten it; but now, when he felt himself easing further into something along the lines of affection, he recognized the pattern that Ren had already begun to lay out. Everything was starting to make sense.

 

Ren caught him looking. He turned to meet Hux’s gaze head on.

 

“What?” Ren asked.

 

“Nothing,” Hux replied, so very far from the truth.


	7. Chapter Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello friends :) this chapter would've been up sooner, as it has been pre-written for a while, but I had some minor changes I wanted to make (read: angst) so here it is now, instead of being up like a week ago. leave me a comment on here how ya feel about it, or feel free to send me a message on tumblr (@begforyourmercy). i'm always up for talking about writing and my favorite space nerds!  
> \- mercy

_What do bad men do when they’ve lost?_

 

Hux didn’t want to admit it, but he’d had this very thought in his head for most of his life. Ever since childhood - since the swift overhaul from life in the failing Empire to new, shining purpose in the First Order - he’d known they weren’t necessarily on the good side. He was destined for greatness, and power, and domination. It just wouldn’t be in the path of the righteous that he walked. And based on what he’d seen in his short life - whether it be from the Empire, the stories his father told him, or the cheesy holofilms he’d smuggled during his Academy years - that the bad men rarely, if ever, succeeded. His downfall was hard to swallow, but statistically, it was inevitable. Bad men were always defeated in the end; most died horrifically, but not all. So Hux wondered: if they didn’t die defeated, what in seven Sith hells did they _do_?

 

It would seem, after months and months of life in exile, he finally had his answer.

 

Bad men get on like everyone else.

 

Bad men, after they’ve lost and taken the great fall off their stone pedestal, simply _live_. It’s all they can do anymore - their titles have been stripped, their dignity stolen, their life’s work invalidated - so they just... exist. Without question. Without choice.

 

Bad men move around, from planet to planet, too afraid and paranoid to stay in one place for too long. They grow out their hair, change their clothes. They stop saying each other’s names, for fear that if someone overhears, they’ll be discovered. They fall into a steady routine of relocate, wait, pack up, run, repeat and know that they’ll have to keep doing it until they heave their last breath.

 

They live on the sharp of a knife, balanced and poised but always in danger. At least, that was the way he and Ren had done it so far.

 

But, in the same respect: they also live more… gently, perhaps?

 

Gone is the constant threat of battle, the ever-present headache from always trying to think one step ahead of your enemy. Gone is the stress of maintaining a facade of calm when the world is threatening to cave in on you at any given second. Gone is the waiting, the attack, then more waiting. Gone is death and decay and destruction during the day, and reliving it every night, nightmares hiding just behind your eyelids to attack.

 

In hiding, there is none of that. There is a lot of waiting; a lot of sitting on the edge of your seat. There is far too much distrust and silence between two people who are never more than ten feet away from each other. But there is no death and decay. Only the detached, hazy threat of it - nothing more.

 

So, bad men live on the edge of hostility and calm. Bad men are always ready to run, but find less and less that they actually have to. Bad men exist among the mundanity, as if they’ve always been there.

 

Bad men - like Hux - did the dishes in the lazy afternoon, while Ren lay in a useless heap on their threadbare couch and listened to the radio.

 

The gentle heat of the sink full of dishwater was the only real warmth in their cramped, drafty apartment. Hux had his hands deep in it, up to his elbows as he scrubbed their meager pots and pans, hoping to leech some of the warm out of it and into his chilled bones. The deep-set cold didn’t seem to bother Ren at all; he lounged a few feet away, hulking body stretched out lazily on the old couch. His arms were bare, his feet uncovered. Every time Hux caught a glimpse of him in the corner of his eye, he shivered. The tiny radio filled the cold air with unfamiliar music, punctuated by long period of wordless static; when the monotony would finally break for a tune, Ren hummed, soft and low. Hux had no idea how he knew every song that played, but he was too content in his silence to ask.

 

In another life, he would’ve found this boring. Their entire existence here - here being some nondescript moon world, sitting on the edge of the Outer Rim where civilization barely existed - was based around this tiny little apartment. They ventured outside these four white walls only for food and drink, too afraid and too distrustful to do much more. All other times, they found themselves here: trapped inside a cage of plaster and wood, with nothing to do but eat and sleep and try to keep quiet. They had little comforts of home here: the few dishes Hux scrubbed at, a bed that laid on the floor of the only bedroom, the couch Ren lounged (and slept) on, the crackling radio, and the scratched wooden table the radio sat on. They had one spare change of clothes each: one for the day cycle, one for the sleep cycle.

 

The old Hux - the _General_ Hux, who used his title and intimidation to procure only the finest of trinkets to fill his rooms aboard the Finalizer - would have been appalled by this extreme minimalism. The new Hux certainly wasn’t keen on it - but it wasn’t as if he was living like this by choice.

 

Hux didn’t feel as if have any choice anymore. He let Ren pilot the shuttle when they hopped from planet to planet, only because he had no idea where to go; he allowed Ren to take the reins and lead, to smooth talk their way out of dangerous situations and fight out when talk wasn’t enough. He wasn’t fit for survival on the ground - not when he’d been raised high above in the clouds.

 

But he was getting on. That was all he could ask for.

 

Well, almost all. There was one other thing, but it was unthinkable - especially when the other person in the room could read his mind.

 

An image flashed across the forefront of his brain, delicately placed there by Ren: in it, he saw himself, back half turned, head bent over the sink as he solemnly slaved away at his work. The pale light streaming in from the window landed atop his mussed hair, making it glow softly like a low-burning fire; his white skin looked unearthly, drained and translucent. His jaw was set, cheeks sucked in - brows set in a look of sullen concentration. He looked inhumanly tired.

 

 _Always working so hard_ , Ren whispered into his mind. There was an unexpected shade of fondness that accompanied his words, illustrated blush pink in Hux’s frontal lobe. Soft and gentle and flushing, like blood rising in one’s face.

 

 _Someone has to_ , Hux replied, after much too long of a hesitation. He could feel his cheeks turning the same color that spread across his senses. _I guess that’s me_.

 

 _You never asked me to_. Ren almost sounded hurt, his words colored blue.

 

Hux cleared his throat to rid himself of the breath that suddenly caught there. This expressiveness, this emotion - it wasn’t unlike Ren. It was very much like Ren to always be emotionally unhinged. So why then did this feel so much… _different?_

 

 _Would you have, if I asked?_ He found, after asking it, that he genuinely wanted to know.

 

Ren didn’t reply right away, but Hux could feel the shift of emotions across the surface of his mind; he didn’t have to glance at Ren to know that he was smiling, ever so lightly.

 

_You know that I would._

 

At that, Hux wanted to look. He wanted to look at Ren; wanted to turn his head and see that Ren was still captivated with him like he had been in that short, sweet mental image. He wanted to see Ren watching him, see that fondness in his eyes that showed up so evidently in his conveyed thoughts. He wanted it so badly that it made the very marrow in his bones ache with longing.

 

Instead, he rinsed off a dish, and began to lather up another one.

 

Ren turned his attention back to the radio, and with that, the brief moment dissolved. With large, surprisingly adept fingers, he fiddled with the control panel to try and calibrate it to something new. Hux had worried, when Ren first turned on the old thing, that he’d forget the danger and start using the Force to switch the channels back and forth. It was bad enough that Ren kept up the mind communication - even though he insisted over and over again that it was only a fraction of a blip of disturbance in the Force, and because it was used at such close range, that Snoke would never be able to detect it - but he didn’t seem to be headed that way, so Hux didn’t say anything. Not that he would have to; Ren would have plucked the thought out of his head before it was fully formed.

 

And that was precisely - and unsurprisingly - what he did.

 

“Instead of yelling at me,” Ren said softly, finally speaking out loud, “you could just ask me to speak out loud, you know.”

 

Hux felt a twitch in his cheek, his mouth aching to turn up into a smile. “Again,” he muttered, “would you have done it?”

 

“Again,” Ren replied swiftly, “you know that I would.”

 

Hux was starting to know that.

 

Ren had done so much for him already, most things that he didn’t have to even ask for anymore. He watched his back out in public, gently guiding him away from danger he wasn’t aware of; he gave up blankets and cloaks and food and weapons if Hux was in need; he even managed to smuggle things that caught Hux’s eye when they were out, whether it be food, toiletries or trinkets that they both knew they couldn’t afford. Hux was usually unaware of it at the time, and only found out when another cheap, shiny thing popped up somewhere in their home.

 

 _Home_ . Hux didn’t know when he’d begun to think of it as home, but it didn’t feel unnatural. They’d been at this place the longest in all of their time running, going on three months now; it was a dimly-lit apartment, plain and small, but it was clean and dry and nondescript. The building it occupied was on the edge of a calm, quiet city on a cool Outer Rim planet. The First Order didn’t reach here; the Resistance was almost unheard of. It was quite possibly the safest place in the galaxy to call _home_ , at least for now.

 

_Home. I like that._

 

Hux turned to glare at him, but it held little malice. “Get out of my head, Ren,” he quipped, too softly to offer any sense of threat. Ren didn’t even glance his way, so Hux stared back down at the sink.

 

“It’s not my fault you think so loud,” Ren answered, his loud voice sounding strange out in the open air instead of reverberating inside Hux’s skull. “It’s louder than the music.”

 

“Turn it up, then.” Hux rinsed another dish, letting the statement hang in the air; as if it were a dare he was waiting on Ren to carry out, lest he be branded a coward. A gentle, playful stab.

 

And so, after a moment’s hesitation, Ren did. As if he were doing it out of spite - something that was entirely like Ren to do. The radio fuzzed in protest as the volume was cranked up, more noise and interference than song as the dial climbed higher. The song was old, and of Alderaanian origins, based on the horned instruments carrying the tune and the singer’s easy, lilting voice. The whole thing radiated ease and peacefulness; Hux silently found it absurd that someone as erratic and emotional as Ren would want to listen to a long so polarly opposite. But Ren seemed to enjoy it - in fact, he seemed to know it very well, based on the sudden tapping of his large foot on the cold floor, and the gentle hum growing louder.

 

“You know this?” Hux asked, more statement than question as he began to drain the dishwater.

 

In between hums, Ren replied, “Of course. My, um - General Organa.  She was from Alderaan. It’s all very familiar.”

 

Hux hummed softly in response; the warmth of the water on his limbs made him tired, and he was only really half listening. But the mention of Leia - particularly, Ren’s slip up at the mention of her - brought him somewhat back to awareness. “Your mother-”

 

“ _General Organa_ -”

 

“Your mother,” Hux said again; his tone was soft, but pointed. He stared out the little window over the sink as he spoke, drained not just by the dishes but by Ren’s defensiveness. _No use in pretending it’s not true, Ren_ , he chided silently. Then, out loud, he asked, “Did she show you this song?”

 

Ren, obviously still taken aback, had not resumed humming. No soft tapping of his foot on the floor had kept sounding. Hux could feel eyes on the back of his head, watching him, _daring_ him to say more - but he stayed quiet, waiting patiently for Ren to reply.

 

“Yes,” he finally answered. “She did.”

 

“Hmm,” Hux hummed again.

 

“Why does it matter?”

 

Hux’s arms were sore, and growing cold as the water disappeared. “It doesn’t.” He pulled his hands out of the sink, wiped the clinging soap off his reddened knuckles.  “I just wanted to know.”

 

His words were nonchalant, and he didn’t look at Ren. But he wanted Ren to keep looking at him. Like Ren had earlier, Hux tried to push a color into his mind, adding depth and sentiment to his words that, by themselves, held little meaning. He thought of a soft, faded shade of peach - like sunlight filtering through rose-tinted glass walls.

 

And just like that - like the snapping of a thread, like the flipping of a switch - Ren’s anger was gone. Those dark eyes stopped burning a hole in the back of Hux’s head as soon as he read Hux’s thoughts, realizing that Hux had had no ill intent behind the statement.

 

Before Ren could take the words from his head, Hux spoke. “We’ve been here all this time, Ren. I think I’m entitled to a little bit of meaningless information about you.”

 

Ren, seeming embarrassed, turned his head away. “Who I used to be, you mean.”

 

Hux lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “It’s all relative, Ren. It’s you, no matter when it was.”

 

Like so many times when they talked, Ren had nothing more to say. He looked as if he could have said every single thought in his mind, but clamped his mouth down in that peculiar way that he tended to do. Disappointed, but keeping it close to his chest, Hux turned back to the dishes, and Ren focused his entire attention on the strange but nostalgia-inducing song on the radio.

 

“You know,” Hux spoke up, swirling his fingers idly back and forth through the murky sink as it drained, “when you think about it, there’s two people who you used to be.”

 

Ren made a sound similar to a snort. “What?”

 

“Ben Solo, pitiable thing, was the first you. Then you were Kylo Ren, destructo extraordinaire. And now-”

 

“I’m still Kylo Ren,” Ren interjected, not unkindly.

 

Hux refrained from rolling his eyes, instead turning to stare blankly at Ren. “Tell me, after all of this -” he gestured with dripping hands to the little room surrounding them, but his words encompassed the entire universe itself, “- that you don’t feel one bit like a different person.”

 

Ren pursed his lips, thinking on it. With some chagrin, he looked away, subtly nodding in agreement. “True.”

 

“We’re not the same,” Hux continued. He was cold up to his very elbows, leaving spots of soapy suds on the floor and wet stains where his arms hit his clothes, but he was on a roll now, riding the brief wave of introspection as it swept through his mind’s sea of thoughts. “This… This _exile_ of sorts - it’s changed us into different people, with different knowledge, different needs. There’s no way that either of us - if we had the choice, which it’s entirely clear that we don’t - could step back into our former selves. You couldn’t be a knight again. I couldn’t be a general again. That’s just… not who we are anymore. We’re different in every possible, conceivable way.”

 

Ren mulled this over, chewing a lip. “So, then, you’re just… Hux?”

 

Hux shrugged his one-shoulder shrug. He’d always been _something_ before Hux: Cadet Hux, fresh and new in the academy; Lieutenant Hux, then General Hux, fearless and firm leader. Just being _Hux_ was plain, but not entirely disagreeable. It fit, ordinary but comfortable. “Nothing more, nothing less.”

 

“And I’m just me. Just…”

 

“Just Ren,” Hux finished for him. “Or Kylo, if you prefer. Or maybe Ben. Or maybe something else entirely, since you’re different.”

 

“Not Ben,” he said with a glower. “Never Ben. But... Ren isn’t terrible. Just Ren.”

 

Hux nodded. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t look away.

 

Ren’s thick brows furrowed; his jaw twitched a little, working itself unconsciously the way it did when he was deep in thought. After stewing on it for a long while, he finally spoke up as Hux was turning to get back to his dishes. “If I’m different, then why ask about Ben Solo? About Kylo Ren?”

 

Hux’s mouth almost made a smile. “Because,” he said simply, “it’s still _you_.”

 

The air between them shimmered, the pinks and reds and peaches in their brains nearly tangible in the physical realm. The Alderaanian song ended with a flourish. Hux finally tucked the dishes away, and wiped his cracked hands entirely dry.

 

When the next song started, bright and achingly sweet as sunrise, Ren stood up.

 

“If you really want to know meaningless things about the old versions of me, then here’s one more thing,” he finally spoke. There was a tenseness in his shoulders, a nervousness that hung around them like a cloak; but at the same time, he was smiling slightly, an exciting thrill of energy waiting to let loose hiding just beneath the surface. “When I was - when _Ben Solo_ \- was young, he - he was taught how to dance.” Ren swallowed, waiting for it to sink in. “And he didn’t hate it.”

 

Ren held out his hand to Hux. Offering it.

 

He wanted to dance.

 

With Hux.

 

Anxiety was suddenly bubbling up in his gut. He didn’t see just one color in his head; he was now picturing all the colors at once, flashing across his brain at an alarming and overwhelming rate. How often had Hux wondered about this, with Ren growing fonder and gentler by the day, when the time would come that he would finally make some sort of move or advance. Hux had never done anything to rebuff these small intimations, these tiny glimpses that there was something other than just passivity beneath the surface of Ren’s feelings - overcome by loneliness, and not wanting to be abandoned planetside, should he turn the other man away, had always won out and allowed the goings-on to continue. There was also the suspicion that his own heart was leaning toward his travel companion, but having never felt anything like it before in his life, he didn’t even know how to begin to make sense of it.

 

His throat felt raw and ragged, heart leaping at his vocal cords. “Did Kylo Ren enjoy dancing?” he asked in a voice no more forceful than a whisper.

 

Ren’s mouth quirked, brown eyes heart-wrenchingly honest. “He never got the chance.”

 

Hux knew one thing for certain. He wanted to dance with Ren.

 

But... he couldn’t. He wasn’t ready.

 

“Then you should know,” Hux murmured, voice quivering too much to be loud, “that I don’t dance.”

 

He turned and left the room, taking only his regrets with him.

 

\---

 

Their tiny apartment only had one bed. They didn’t share it.

 

Long after the planet’s eternally-hidden sun had gone down, Hux dragged his weary bones to the tiny bedroom where the flat, lumpy mattress took up most of the floor. Since the moment they took up residence here, Ren insisted that Hux take the bed, setting up camp each and every single night on the even more uncomfortable couch. Hux knew that Ren didn’t sleep well - his huge body could barely fit on it when he was sitting, much less laying down - but he never complained, never asked for anything different.

 

That kind gesture always made Hux feel a flash of shame, but tonight, Ren’s silent chivalry only served to make Hux feel even worse. He was sick to his stomach with regret and longing - there was still _something_ he could’ve done to fix today, make up for what he’d done by letting Ren be comfortable for once - but like a true coward, he’d said nothing at all, and had fled Ren’s presence as soon as they both hinted at sleep.

 

Crawling on all fours to the center of the bed, Hux collapsed into the middle of it, letting all the breath be pushed out of his lungs as he flattened himself across the surface. Feeling tired from so many days filled with nothingness would never make any sense to him. Unless carrying shame wrapped around your shoulders like a dead animal hide suddenly counted, because then, it made all too much sense.

 

The room was too cold, the air too still. He tucked himself beneath the threadbare blankets, wishing desperately that he wasn’t alone.

 

For a heartbeat or two, he allowed himself to think: _maybe it isn’t too late_.

 

Maybe he could still take it all back. Maybe he could face things head-on, let the full force of some emotion other than the anger or disappointment he had always been used to wash over him, create something clean and new and entirely. He wasn’t something before Hux anymore. He didn’t have to live up to any standard other than what he decided for himself.

 

 _I’m cold_ , he thought to Ren.

 

Ren heard it and stirred. His mind connected sleepily and slowly. _Blankets_?

 

_I have enough._

 

Ren heard this too. _Heat’s running_ , he said back. _Sick_?

 

_No. Just… cold._

 

Ren didn’t ask a question, but the impression of one hung in the air. The silence was suddenly filled with a faint creaking, springs in the couch whining; next came the soft pads of bare feet against floor, louder and louder until they ceased.

 

Hux always closed the door when he slept. Tonight, he’d left it open - he could feel Ren standing there in the threshold, unsure if he could cross the invisible line drawn that usually kept him out.

 

 _What do you need_? Ren whispered into his head.

 

Hux didn’t say anything, didn’t turn and look. Instead, he slowly moved over in the bed, squishing himself up against the wall to make room for someone much taller and broader than himself.

 

Ren stood, silent and still, so rigid that Hux could sense it.

 

Then he reached out and, softly and agonizingly slowly, closed the door. Footsteps followed soon after, trailing away into the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, thank you for reading, commenting, and following along :)


	8. Chapter Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> be prepared, y'all... it's time to get into the sappy love parts. i know you've all been waiting long enough.
> 
> \- mercy

The planet was cool and damp, but it never rained.

 

Clouds filled the slate-grey sky on any given day; they’d seen this system’s sun only a handful of times since coming here, and one of those had been when the shuttle broke through the atmosphere. Morning and night passed simply as a gradual lightening and darkening, a subtle shift from pale grey to dark grey, and then a finale of blackness that prevailed til the early hours - only to start all over again in its monochromatic cycle. There was no sunshine or rain, or even a break in the clouds. Hux found comfort in its routine; it maddened Ren, however, who was used to the intensity of violent storms and the hot sun beating down on his face. He was unaccustomed to sameness; unappreciative, even.

 

(They did not talk much, but if they did, it was usually about the weather. Ren, endlessly complaining about its constancy; Hux, gently complimenting it. It was the most they could manage to say to each other out loud, after they’d let what was beginning to blossom between them die so carelessly. After they’d put it down like a sick dog, only to long for it to come back.)

 

Over endless weeks and weeks on this world of grey, the two men became a little less guarded. No one here in this lonely place ever spoke to them, or even looked their way; they didn’t recognize their faces or so much as care to try and discover their identities. It made no sense to sit cooped up in the tiny apartment space all day long, hiding from threats that simply didn’t seem to exist in this corner of the galaxy.

 

So, they began to venture out. Together, of course; they still hardly let one another out of sight, lest they betray the other the moment they got the opportunity. (At least, that was what they’d convinced themselves the reason was, when in fact, they had all but forgotten what life was without the presence of the other.) Together, they would leave the cramped space to do one small errand or another: fetching food from the market, or supplies for repairing old clothes or dishes. Things only necessary for survival.

 

As more nothing happened, they got braver. They ran their usual errands, silent and stoic as they briskly wandered the city - and then some. Sometimes Ren, hulking and restless as always, dragged Hux outside for a walk. Sometimes Hux coaxed Ren into dinner out somewhere, but those outings were always cut short by some reason for paranoia or another, so those were few and far between. The only thing they shied away from, in these days or domesticity, was the affection of one another.

 

Some nights, Hux left the bedroom door open. Ren lingered by the door, but never came in.

 

Today they walked side by side down the street, going to market as if it were any other day. Hux was on the side closest to the road, and Ren on the side nearest to the shops. His hair loose around his shoulders and clad full in black, Ren looked more like himself than he had this entire time in exile; Hux had been worried he’d be recognized, but not a single head or wary eye turned his way as they walked, so he kept the worry close to his chest. Hux didn’t dare mention it anyway; Ren wasn’t exactly damaging to the eye like this.

 

It was no remarkable date or time, the same as any other morning they’d spent here. But today… today felt _different_. Something about the street before them - the very air around them - looked and felt off, though Hux, half stuck in his head, couldn’t put his finger on what it was. There were a few more people than usual, but that wasn’t quite it...

 

And then, something caught his eye, and he knew. He and Ren strolled past a store with its doors propped open, warm light streaming from the inside; the glow illuminated a small pot, sitting on the lowest step outside the doors. The pot overflowed with bright purple blooms, and leaves as green as he’d ever seen. He stopped in his tracks and stared, leaving Ren to wander a few steps ahead before realizing Hux was no longer in step with him, and turning around.

 

“What?” Ren asked, eyes bright with concern.

 

Hux pointed down at the pot.  “Flowers,” he said simply.

 

Flowers were blooming on rooftops and balconies - Hux hadn’t even known there was _any_ plant life here, much less _flowers_ \- and banners with writing on it being unfurled in windows that Hux couldn’t even begin to interpret. People were suddenly rushing out of the shops and houses, running around, especially the children, with little drawstring bags; when Hux saw one up close, he saw they were filled with chalky, pastel powders of all different colors, though he couldn’t fathom what exactly they were for. All his brain could register was _color_ , color that made his eyes blur and his chest ache with a familiarity long forgotten. Color had suddenly appeared in every square foot of space.

 

“What’s going on?” Ren asked aloud, though Hux could feel his surprise internally as well. Hux just shrugged as a response, just as clueless as the other man. Just as clueless, and just as dazzled, though neither seemed to admit to it.

 

In all their time here, they had never bothered to learn anything about this planet, other than the fact that it was neutral to the war efforts and mostly human-occupied. It was the same wherever they’d been before: why bother knowing about a place you'd probably run from in a span of a few cycles? _Knowing_ means _missing_ , and Hux didn’t think he had the capacity to miss anything else in life. He’d spent too much time missing the Finalizer and Starkiller already; he could not take much more.

 

But something, some _tiny little hint_ of knowledge about this planet, and about all Outer Rim planets in general, peeked out at him from the dusty corners of his brain. It was an incomplete thought - a simple, broken fragment of something he’d read or heard somewhere - but it was enough to set a dawning of realization in motion. _Planets in the Outer Rim… something different, something special..._

 

_Outer Rim planets tend to have extreme weather,_ he hurriedly thought to Ren, who was only half listening, eyes still transfixed on the flowers. Then, out loud, he said, “I think it’s going to rain.”

 

Ren finally looked up, thick brows un-scrunching as the same realization settled over him.

 

As if it were waiting for a cue, the sky began to grumble and growl, low and inhuman. The copper-tinged, electrically charged air stilled; the entire street, beings and buildings and all, seemed to wait with baited breath. _This is it_ , everyone and no one said at once.

 

The sky cracked, and the heavens above unleashed her fury on the earth.

 

The shock of the cold rain bearing down on them made both Hux and Ren gasp, but the crowd around them began to erupt into cheers. The sheer joy of something long awaited finally being _here_ radiated into the very molecules of the air, an energy weaving its way in and around all the beings that suddenly swarmed into the roadway, a mass of jumping, tangling bodies. Their hands were all outstretched above their heads, reaching toward the sky as if in a physical form of gratitude. Some screamed, some cried, but one thing was very clear: even the smallest of things, like rain, meant something dear to everyone.

 

And then, the real magic began to happen.

 

Great plumes of powder began to fly into the air. Dusty clouds of pastel met the clear drumming rain as the crowd tossed up the contents of the little bags, and suddenly everything imaginable was filled with color. Greens and blues and oranges and pinks, exploding into existence all over the place - on clothes, on the ground beneath their feet, on the faces of laughing children. Hux and Ren felt it hit them too, sticking to the backs of their hands as they shielded their eyes and faces; Ren’s black coat was spotted with a stripe of blue, and when Hux wiped a sticky spot on his face, his fingers came back tinged with purple as bright as the flowers.

 

Hux was beyond transfixed. He was amazed, both at the force of nature that had suddenly materialized out of nowhere. He was amazed that even out here on the edges of the galaxy, among the various shades of grey, so much color and vibrancy could exist. That even with so much apathy, something akin to _hope_ could thrive - these people had held out hope for rain for so long, and when it finally came, thanked the very skies above them for a gracious gift.

 

He stumbled into the crowd, rendered dizzy by the sudden rush of life into a place as dull as this. People pushed and shoved past him, but not unkindly; they ran to each other, throwing their bodies into each other’s arms and exclaiming in languages he didn’t know enough of to fully understand. They threw more of the powder into the open air, in each other’s faces, into the gutters where water began to churn in neon puddles. The sky rumbled again - a deep booming laugh of amusement at the little reverie below. Hux swung his head around to find Ren, but could only see the blurs of unfamiliar, color-smeared faces in the crowd. He smiled so much that his face hurt from the strain.

 

_And I always thought the Force was something magical_ , he thought, _when really, it doesn’t come close to this. Magic has always been amongst the ordinary - you just have to know where to look._

 

And suddenly Ren was in his field of vision again, standing in the middle of the street, hair clinging wetly to his face. Color ran down him - his face, his clothes, everywhere it could possibly be - in smooth rivulets, staining his pale skin like watercolor on a blank canvas. He was smiling more brightly than Hux had ever seen him before; it put lines on his cheeks and crinkled his eyes until they nearly disappeared. He looked so beautiful, Hux thought. He looked so… _happy_.

 

And then, the smile was fading, but the joy didn’t dissipate. It still lit up his eyes, still clung to his features as he noticed Hux staring. He turned to face Hux and held out a big, pink-stained hand.

 

“Dance with me,” he said, achingly sincere.

 

There was music playing, somewhere along the street. Hux didn’t know where it poured out of - which tiny cafe or market’s doors it drifted from - but it was there, gleeful and bright and real. Real as the rain, as the people already dancing in circles around them, as the children screaming and laughing and the ladies crying and rejoicing. And just as real as Ren, standing in front of him, hand at the ready.

 

Hux should have denied him once more. Should have shunned his hand, like he did that day in the kitchen; a simple shake of his head would wash Ren’s hopes away with the rain. It would be over and done with in a single, fleeting moment, and then they could move on and return to life as normal.

 

But their life wasn’t normal. It hadn’t been normal for some time, and as far as he could tell, it would never go back to being the normal that it once was. And finally, he would stop longing for it to be. Finally, he would stop waiting for the stars to align, waiting for his heart to be strong enough to withstand whatever Ren could throw at him. He would never be ready if he didn’t dive in headfirst.

 

Hux reached out and laid his hand in Ren’s.

 

In a heartbeat, he was swept close into Ren’s embrace. One arm glided smoothly over his waist, and the other one kept a tender grip on Hux’s hand; they were so close in the middle that they could nearly feel the beating of each other’s hearts.

 

Ren led, taking the first step.

 

The music was fast and light, but they swayed slow. Ren’s laughter rang out every time Hux stepped on his toes or stumbled; picking up the pace, he kicked at the colorful river running through the road, splashing it up around their legs as he led Hux in a dramatic waltz around the street. The entire town was out here, dancing much more vibrantly and excitedly than they were, but the closeness made it feel as if they were entirely alone together. This street was not theirs, but the moment belonged to them.

 

The song finished, but they kept dancing.

 

It was then, soaked to the bone, painted blue as the sky, and wrapped up in Ren’s arms, that Hux realized that he hadn’t really declined to dance that first day. In fact, they’d both been dancing all along - all by themselves, with no partner to guide them or be the other’s guide. They’d danced around each other, nimble as a prima on toes and balls of feet; they’d danced alongside one another, in sync to the beat of life but always a foot or so apart, never touching; and they’d certainly spent whole concertos’ worth of time dancing away from each other, too afraid to get too close, lest they never be able to separate. Lest they have to separate, and never be able to recover from it.

 

But yet, here they were. Hand in hand, arm in arm, clumsy and off-beat, but still dancing.

 

And how good it felt, to finally be dancing _with_ each other.

 

\-----

 

The first time their lips met was a vibrant wonder that made the rainbow-streaked streets pale in comparison. Ducked in an alleyway, pinks and blues dripping down their cheeks like tears of relief, Hux and Ren pulled each other close once more and kissed the same way they fought: intensely, deeply, fueled by fire and brimstone that never seemed to die down. But when it ended, there was no blood, no clenched fists and flashing eyes - just shy laughs and nervous smiles, and maybe another kiss or two.

 

Hux couldn’t fathom how he had ever thought he wouldn’t be ready for this.

 

\-----

 

Hours later, they found their way back to the apartment. Covered head to toe in colors, soaked through their skin with icy rain, they fell into bed together. Still dancing, but with different steps.

 

Clothes tugged away, lips bit and kissed. Moles and scars traced with shaking hands in the dying daylight.

 

Hux looked at Ren, a moment before the full force of the hurricane of Ren’s affections were set to fall down upon him. Dark eyes flicked up and met his gaze every time Ren planted a kiss somewhere on Hux’s body - making sure that Hux saw him do it, that he saw what was behind his every intention. How he wanted this just as much as Hux did. It was like looking down the barrel of a blaster - a terrifying thrill, knowing that everything was about to change.

 

“Call me Ben,” Ren whispered, lips grazing over the cold bare skin of Hux’s chest.

 

“Okay,” Hux whispered back, “but only if you call me Armitage.”

 

\-----

 

_After_ was a new realm of existence - one that only contained the color-stained sheets, and the two men wrapped up in them. It was a dark night, but Hux (no, Armitage), still awake, could still see Ben. The other man slept deeply, his broad back that faced Armitage rising and falling evenly as he breathed in and out. He wasn’t dreaming; his body and mind were entirely spent, while Hux’s was still tingling and reeling from every moment of it.

 

He studied Ren, wanting to drink in the sight of him and commit every feature to memory that he might not have already. The milk-pale skin of his back was a speckled sky, dotted with countless constellations of moles; Hux traced them with fingertips barely brushing the skin, so as not to wake him. Following up the length of Ben’s spine, he jumped from one smattering of dark stars to the next, on a journey upward to somewhere amongst this little galaxy where the territory was new.

 

Armitage brushed Ben’s long, dark curls away from the nape of his neck. Beneath, lay a peculiar looking dark spot: a mole, it seemed, but bigger than the rest. It was flat to his skin, not raised like the others - Armitage could swear it hadn’t been there before, having seen the patch of skin bare when Ben shifted his collar or put up his hair. Worry crept up in the back of his mind, but he tamped it down; the spot was small, and it didn’t look like a bruise that would cause pain. No sense in fussing over it.

 

Leaning forward, Armitage pressed his lips to it gently, promising silently to love it just as much as he loved the rest of his spots. For they were a part of Ren - of _Ben_ \- and he had never loved anyone or anything more.

 

\-----

 

For a time, they were inseparable.

 

They had taken one step forward the day the colors rained from the sky; the second step, they had taken that very same night. In the days that followed, they continued on, from baby steps to walking steadily, before taking off into a run with mad abandon. Day and night, they stayed wrapped up in one another, skin pressed on skin with all intentions of becoming one. Every inch of their bodies became intimately acquainted, every inch of their minds sacrificed to the other - through quiet whispers and mumbles, through opening the doors into each other’s heads. They crawled inside one another’s rib cages and made a home out of it, right next to their hearts, where love slept peacefully at last.

 

It was something that ordinary people took for granted, this love. But those who had been starved of love held tight to it with both hands, and would rather kill it than let it go. Their love was lethal, and when one was as drunk on it as they were, it made them feel unstoppable. Damn the power, damn the titles, damn all of the life they had known before this - they could conquer the galaxy just as they were now, armed with nothing but a kiss on the lips and clasped hands.

 

Their love made them many things. Inseparable, for as long as they could be. Powerful, from as much they could take in.

 

But those in love never were the most _careful_.

 

Armitage stood in front of the kitchen sink, staring out the little window into the grey day. No one was around - it was beginning to grow colder, signifying that this planet did experience some variation of winter, making everyone shut their windows and doors and huddle up snugly by their heating vents. Still, he stared out at the deserted street, determined to look anywhere else but at the tiny apartment around him. The apartment, which was now devoid of any sign that he and Ben had ever lived here.

 

Ben entered the room behind him, but Armitage didn’t turn to look. He was no Force user, and he certainly was no mind reader, but he knew exactly what it was that Ben was about to say. It made him angry - angry enough to clench the edge of the metal sink basin, gripping it so hard he felt the skin go tight on his dry, reddened knuckles - but more than anything, it made him sad. Moved to tears, he refused to turn around and face the reality being brought down hard on him.

 

“It’s time to go,” Ben said softly. A soft rustle sounded as he adjusted the bag on his shoulder, carrying the last of their belongings.

 

They had gotten sloppy. That was the brevity of it, plain and simple. They had spent so many days locked away, alone together with nothing on their minds but each other, that they’d seemingly forgotten their past as dangerous men with prices hanging over their heads. They had become so wrapped up in their own little corner of the world, that they hadn’t bothered to look outside and see the Resistance ships starting to land. It was only a matter of time before they were recognized - they had to be off planet as soon as possible. Their time here was up, having slipped through their fingers with no way to get it back.

 

“I know,” Armitage replied, just as hushed. “It’s just - I... I don’t want to go.”

 

Behind him, Ben sighed; the old, barren floor creaked as he crossed it, boots falling in slow, even steps. Armitage felt the warmth of Ben’s body as he stepped up close behind him, strong arms reaching around him and taking him into a gentle embrace. “I don’t either,” he admitted, letting his head fall down to rest on Armitage’s shoulder. “But we’ll be found out if we stay any longer.”

 

“This is _home_ , Ben,” Armitage whimpered, eyes welling and lip quivering. “It’s all we’ve got.”

 

At this, Ben seemed to tense. He pulled back out of the embrace, but just far enough to grip onto the tops of Armitage’s arms, gingerly spinning him around to face him. There was a deep sadness in Ben’s dark brown eyes - a clear indication that we was as deeply upset as Armitage was about having to abandon their little slice of life here - but at the edges of his mouth, the hint of a hopeful smile shone through.

 

“Listen to me,” Ben said softly, but firmly. He clasped both of Armitage’s hands in his own, kept them between them as if he was making a solemn vow. “I know how much this place means to you. Trust me, it means all the same to me. We’ve carved out a home here, we’ve made it entirely unique to us. It’s where we’ve come together - where we realized that we’ll never be apart again. But I promise you-” Taking a pause, Ben raised their conjoined hands up to his mouth, placing the softest of kisses against the back of Armitage’s knuckles, “-that this isn’t all we’ve got. At the end of the day, this is just a house, not a home. Our home… That’s wherever we are, as long as we’re together.”

 

The tears had begun to drip down Armitage's face, unhad sobs clogging up his throat and rendering him unable to speak, but he still managed to nod. Ben slipped a hand out of their joined grip, swiping a finger across Armitage’s cheeks to clear the tear streaks away. “It’ll be alright, dear,” he soothed, palm coming to rest softly on the other man’s cheek. “Now, let’s get going.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> now that we've finally gotten to the good part, let me know what you think! i'm always on tumblr @begforyourmercy so feel free to shoot me a message :)


	9. Chapter Nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, I'm very sick, so we all get to suffer. 
> 
> \- mercy :)

They had been planetside for a mere day before Armitage fell ill.

 

It had started innocently enough. A tightness in his chest, a heaviness that he couldn’t quite pinpoint the location of. This peculiar feeling led to a funny little cough, rattling something inside him that he hadn’t previously even known was there. It made Ben beyond uneasy - they had been planet-hopping for quite some time, visiting so many disreputable corners of the galaxy that there was no telling what nasty virus he’d picked up, or where from - but Armitage had brushed him off, ultimately unbothered. He had dealt with poor health his entire life, he’d explained; no matter what mystery illness he had acquired, it was likely nothing he hadn’t dealt before.

 

The next day, he woke up delirious with fever. His measly cough had transformed to a wheeze, his lungs weighing him down like they were filled with lead.

 

By the third day, he was too weak to leave the bed.

 

Ben refused to leave his side, save for when he ventured out to get supplies, or to work. Dangerously low on credits, they’d agreed some time ago to working odd jobs wherever they could get them, just enough so they could afford to send them off to the next quadrant of space. But now, Ben poured all his recently-earned funds into the local apothecary, desperate for anything that could bring Armie back to his normal self. Salves, herbal teas, experimental medicine concoctions - none of it seemed to make the slightest of difference. Ben kept trying anyway.

 

When Armitage had been sick for twelve cycles in a row, he had all but given up.

 

Ben hovered in the doorway of the bedroom - a habit of his that seemed so hard to let go. He allowed himself to linger for a little bit longer, bracing his heart for the somber silence inside the room: Armitage, seemingly asleep, nearly hidden beneath swathes of blankets and propped up on a stack of pillows. His pallor was the same shade of whitish-grey as the walls around him; Ben could barely see him breathe. 

 

Out of the deathly quiet came a feeble cough. “Admiring the view?” Armie croaked, turning his head toward Ben and opening his eyes a crack. His gaze looked so much further away than just ten feet.

 

With slow steps, Ben finally entered the room, lowering himself gently onto the bed to sit on Armitage’s right side. Armie’s shirt was unbuttoned to his navel, an earthy-scented salve spread across his bony chest. The only thing it had done so far was make the room smell of mint and eucalyptus. “I was admiring something,” Ben murmured lowly, taking up Armie’s limp hand and massaging some life into it.

 

“Don’t say my willpower,” Armitage said with a faint smirk. “That went out the door on day four.”

 

Ben’s heart fell to the floor and splintered, but he made an attempt to smile. “Your black humor, then.” After Armie hummed his approval, Ben went on, “I’m going to go to town again later. See if there’s anything else useful I might have missed -”

 

“Don’t bother, Ben,” Armie whispered, eyes closed again. “It’s won’t help.”

 

“Then let me heal you,” Ben whispered as he crawled into bed beside Armitage. With a gentle shift of the sick man’s body, Ben pulled him into a soft embrace, tucking him lovingly against his side. Armitage buried his nose in the crook of Ben’s neck, grateful for warmth, despite his body outwardly burning. “I know that  _ will _ help you. It won’t take much of the Force. Snoke will never notice, I swear.” This was a lie, or at least a heavy uncertainty, but he didn’t care - didn’t care about Snoke killing him, about the First Order. The only thing he cared about was nothing taking Armie away from him like this sickness threatened to do.

 

“No,” Armitage murmured, barely audible. His voice was losing power, becoming fainter than air whistling through a cracked window. “Too… too dangerous.”

 

One of Ben’s hands came up to soothingly stroke his hair, sending him closer to sleep. “Then let me take you somewhere,” he begged, his desperation reminiscent of a child’s. “The Inner systems, the Belt… Hells, let me take you to the New Republic, Armitage. To the Resistance.”

 

He burrowed further into Ben’s neck, his response a clear no.

 

“They have the tech,” Ben reasoned, “and I… I can persuade them. I can get them to treat you, Armie. I promise you that. I’ll - I’ll go to my mother again, if that’s what it takes. I’ll go to the light. I’ll do whatever it is they want me to do, so long as they save you.”

 

At this, Armitage mustered all his remaining strength and pulled back. Laying a weak, trembling hand on Ben’s cheek, and looking up at him with bleary, hazy eyes, Armie simply shook his head.

 

“They won’t, Ben,” he whispered. “They won’t have me. Don’t… don’t go there, when you know I can’t follow.”

 

Ben swallowed thickly, too choked up to respond. Tears welled in his eyes, but he willed them not to fall.

 

It was a reality they had faced before - one that resulted in many arguments never to be resolved. There was no side they could pick that would allow them to stay together. Ben could run back home - to the Resistance, to the family he’d left behind that still loved and missed him - and face no consequences. He could go back, as if he’d never walked away from it, and move on with his life. Armitage had no such options. Not only could he not return to the First Order from whence he had come, seeing as how they believed him dead, but he also couldn’t take a single step onto Resistance territory without bringing a death sentence upon his head. He was a war criminal, a vile thing of nightmares that had unleashed his ruthlessness upon the Rebels with no remorse or care; even if they didn’t shoot him on sight, he would be publicly executed, or tortured, or locked away for years on end. Armie and Ben hailed from different worlds; if they were to return to them, it would be the end of life as they now knew it.

 

Armitage’s hand slipped away from Ben’s cheek. He was falling asleep at last, Ben’s gentle cradling of his aching body a welcome distraction from the overwhelming pain. He tucked his face into Ben’s neck and let the world fade out.

 

The stars wouldn’t align for them on their own. But Ben couldn’t stop trying. He’d save this - this little pocket of the universe, this little house they’d built out of the crumbling ruins - if it was the last thing he ever did. Armitage just had to let him. 

 

“I love you,” Ben whispered into Armie’s hair.

 

In his head, he heard it echoed back.

 

\-----

 

Fourteen cycles. Two weeks of Armitage wasting away, nearly comatose. Ben laid beside him day and night, afraid that if he held him too tightly, he would break. Two weeks of resting a hand on his throat to feel a pulse, two weeks of straining his ears to hear his shallow breaths continue. 

 

On the dawning of the fifteenth day, Ben awoke to the sound of gasping.

 

His skin suddenly dripping, body trembling like a leaf forcibly shaken from its branch, Armitage was stiff and contorted beside him on the bed. The fever had finally burned its way through his skin from the inside out, devouring him like a demon in the throes of possession. After so many days of lifelessness, looking as pale and thin as a corpse, it was a nightmarish scene to his body so horrifically alive; Ben called to him -  _ Armitage are you alright can you hear me can you hear me _ \- but only the fever was there to bear witness. He cried and thrashed and clawed with shaking hands, asking for help when words had deserted him. 

 

Ben held him through it all - the sweats, the vomiting, the convulsions. He held him close, one hand tangled in his sweat-soaked hair, the other rubbing his chest to remind him to breathe. He didn’t know if this was some form of excruciating death, or the exorcism of this accursed sickness at last. He just held him close, kissed him where he could, and prayed to some foreigner’s god that his own hands and lips could be enough of a savior. 

 

As he calmed, the mania reducing to little more than a fitful cry, Ben rocked him gently to sleep.

 

“It’s alright, you’re alright,” Ben murmured. “It’s all over now.”

 

\-----

 

Armitage woke to a cold bed and the smell of warm caf drifting through the air.

 

It was three days since his fever broke, and one since Ben had whisked him off planet to somewhere newer and safer; he hadn’t left the bed since touching down, so far gone was his strength. Pushing himself up on weak limbs, Armitage wrapped his too-loose clothes -  _ Ben’s _ clothes, he realized through a thick layer of brain fog -  tighter around his body, which felt almost too fragile and broken to carry him. He stood nonetheless, on legs as unsteady as a newborn deer’s, and left the bed in search of Ben.

 

The planet they’d finally settled on after bouncing around once more - their new “home,” though the both of them would openly admit that they detested it - was an even mix of dark churning ocean, and lush dense forests. It had been an alternate-terrain training station for the First Order some years ago, though now, the only thing that seemed to occupy its ghost towns and deserted camp lots anymore were birds and vermin. Armitage, in his days as General Hux, vaguely remembered being the one to pull the troops out of here and relocate the training team; now, Armitage thanked his former self for not ordering the stormtroopers to destroy their former housing units, or using this remote paradise as target practice for Starkiller. It wasn’t the little grey planet, not  _ home _ , but it was too convenient of a hideout to waste.

 

Slowly, Armitage dragged himself through the small corridor of the housing unit, hands skimming the walls for support. They’d taken the training captain’s unit, which was built like a cabin in the wilderness: natural materials made to look utilitarian, but oddly cozy at the same time. The grey wood walls melded into the grey wood floors; the rooms flowed linearly into one another, separated by corridors in a bedroom-hallway-kitchen-hallway-living room pattern. 

 

When Armitage reached the kitchen, he found the source of the smell: two cups of caf sitting on the counter, one half-drunk, the other full to the top and still steaming. One for Ben - still nowhere to be found - and one for him. He leaned his hip against the plasteel countertop and took the full mug in his trembling hands. 

 

In the silent moments while he sipped at his caf, Armitage’s ears picked up a strange sound: in between the harsh winds that always whistled against the siding of the house, there was an irregular hum, cutting in and out and growing louder and softer at odd intervals. He paused his sips of caf and leaned toward the nearest window, listening. The sound persisted, though it was not following any beat or rhythm. Not a machine - that would be consistent, measured. Something manual. 

 

He recognized it. 

 

It had been so long since he’d heard it that he didn’t want to believe it. Struggling to the sliding glass door at the far end of the kitchen, Armitage opened it and peered outside.

 

Ben was out in the yard, standing tall and broad and bare-chested against the rough wind. His lightsaber - an unstable monstrosity of a weapon, red as blood with flickering crossguards and a wicked long blade - was in his hands, leveled with the horizon as he held it out before him. His hair was tied back in a bun, but the relentless wind caught loose pieces of it, blowing them about his face in messy wisps until they stuck to his sweaty skin. He looked intense; he looked dangerous, as  _ Kylo Ren _ always had when that thing was in his hand. Armitage watched in silent admiration as Ben launched into a fighting routine: guarding against an unseen enemy, then lunging out to strike an invisible target; he parried and ducked, met with sabers that didn’t exist, blocked blaster shots from ghostly adversaries. A rippling mass of muscle, sinew, and sharp edges - it was an elegant way to remind someone how  _ deadly _ and  _ beautiful _ could exist within the same soul.

 

“Haven’t done that in a while,” Armitage called out to him, voice soft enough to be blown away with the wind.

 

Ben looked up, hearing him just fine, and entirely unfazed as if he’d known Armitage was watching all along. “Didn’t want to get too rusty,” he answered, lowering the saber as the blade slowly disappeared. Looking down, Ben rolled his shoulders and wiped beads of sweat off his face with the back of his hand before glancing up again. “Feeling better?”

 

“A little,” Armitage lied, burying his bone deep exhaustion beneath a half-hearted smile.

 

A flash of an image flew across his brain, and he saw himself the way Ben was seeing him now: sunken eyes with bruise-dark bags beneath, face hollow, skin yellow-white with residual sickness. There were bruises all over him, where Ben’s strong hands had held him down while he convulsed. His long, unruly hair was mussed and unwashed; his clothes rumpled and far too big. Not to mention the fact that he was all but clinging to the doorway to stay upright. He was a ghost of a ghost, thinning out of existence. Ben saw right through his little lie - this vision was proof enough. 

 

Ben watched him see it, watched him react to it. “Go back to sleep,” he said gently.

 

“I’ve slept enough,” Armitage said back. 

 

Ben glanced down at his lightsaber; picked at something on the hilt, then let out a poorly-concealed sigh. “At least rest, then.”

 

Armitage lowered a foot down from the doorway, feeling cold, gritty cement as it connected with his bare soles. The grass beyond the house’s small patio looked damp and soft and inviting, but he knew if he ventured out that far, Ben would haul him over one shoulder and drag him back inside. Instead, he lowered the other foot down to the cement as well, and sat down in the open door frame, using the sill as a bench. “There,” he said satisfactorily, “I’m resting.”

 

Ben rolled his eyes and grinned, but it was tight around the eyes. Armitage studied him closely, digging past the handsome gleams of muscle and sweat to the clouded world beneath. Something was deeply troubling him - it was visible in the scrunched eyebrows, the hands knotted around the lightsaber, and especially the smiles that tried in vain to cover it all up. 

 

“Something’s on your mind,” he mused, voice light save for the gentlest hint of prodding.

 

Ben smiled, softly, ruefully. “Just you,” he murmured. 

 

Armitage smiled in response, but still shook his head. “Something else. Ben, what is it?”

 

Here came a long moment of silence. A long while of Ben staring down at the hilt of the saber in his hands, toying with bits and pieces of it like it was the most interesting thing in the world. The words  _ avoidance tactic _ kept flashing across Armitage’s brain, but it wasn’t through the Force; it was just his own anxious mind picking apart Ben’s familiar behavior, as the nothing-filled seconds ticked by. Ben ignited the saber once more - much less focused, still just as somber - and gave it a few lazy swirls and slashes through the empty air before it retracted into the hilt once more. 

 

“I’ve been thinking,” Ben said quietly, “about permanence.”

 

Armitage felt his gut drop to his toes. “Permanence,” he echoed, the word not quite fitting in his careful mouth. “Do you… you don’t mean -”

 

Ben looked up sharply at him, eyes suddenly wide and alert. “No, no,” he said hurriedly, “I don’t - I don’t mean  _ us _ . This,  _ we _ , are permanent, I promise.” He softened his intensity with a small smile, trying to coax one out of Armitage as well. It only half worked. “The permanence I was talking about - it has more to do with… a place.”

 

The anxiety had just barely left Armitage’s heart when it came flooding back. The little grey planet danced about in the back of his mind, washed in rainbows and the relief of warm bodies finally meeting. “We can’t go back there,” Armitage mourned aloud, feeling a pang in his chest when he restated that sad fact to Ben.

 

But Ben’s eyes were dark and wary. “That’s not where I want to go back to.”

 

_ Oh _ .

 

Armitage bit his lip; disappointed, but not surprised, that Ben was bringing up the age-old argument again. “You want to go to the Resistance.”

 

“I want to go to the Resistance,” Ben repeated.

 

Armitage slouched forward, elbows on knees, head in hands. When the seconds ticked by and he still found no words to say, Ben began to squirm. “I know you don’t think it’s a good idea,” he began hastily, dropping his saber into the grass and striding forward to kneel before Armitage, “and I know that you’re healing now. But we’re running out of places to go. Everywhere we’ve tried to make a home out of has been taken over by the Resistance - it’s only a matter of time before they show up here too-”

 

“ _ Why _ ?” Armitage exclaimed, suddenly throwing his hands away from his face and fixing Ben, now up close and personal, with a frustrated glare. “Why is it  _ only a matter of time _ before they ruin this place for us too? What do you know that I don’t, Ben?”

 

As soon as he started shouting, Armitage feared the worst of retaliations. In the days of their past lives, shouting at one another garnered bruises, force choking and throwing bodies into control panels, lightsabers and blasters leveled at each other’s heads in high-intensity stalemates. Though their anger had been traded in for something much softer, the echoes of their history still lingered when a voice was raised loud enough to cause an echo. One moment of anger was enough to set them back years.

 

He saw the fire in Ben’s eyes when they were this close, nearly nose to nose. It felt nothing like their usual intimacy. It felt implausibly foreign and dangerously flammable.

 

“The Resistance is  _ winning _ , Armie,” Ben all but whispered. “The First Order is gone.”

 

He shouldn’t have cared. The First bloody Order had cast him out, left him to die for something that was never his fault. He held no love for any one of his comrades, and certainly none for his wicked Supreme Leader. But as the word  _ gone _ entered his psyche, he felt it physically like a blaster bolt connecting with his spine - like Starkiller herself had sapped the life out of him.

 

“It’s… gone?” He asked weakly, feeling out of breath. Ben nodded. “For how long?”

 

“Weeks,” Ben said, still in that same soft whispering tone. He took Armitage’s hands in his own, massaging the clenched fingers until they opened enough for him to grasp onto. “I heard it over the shuttle comm one night while you were asleep - the First Order had their last stand on Jakku before they up and disappeared. Snoke, the fleet, all of it… It’s just gone. The Resistance is in every corner of the galaxy now, there’s nowhere we can go that they won’t find us anyway. But if we go to them first, I can broker a deal, I can work something out. Armie, do you understand?” Ben frantically grabbed Armitage’s face with both hands, trying desperately to gain his attention and understanding. 

 

Armitage stayed silent, baleful stare fixed somewhere in the middle of Ben’s face. “You didn’t tell me,” was the only thing that tumbled out of his numb mouth. He didn’t know why he cared so much, now that he wasn’t the fearsome General anymore - but old wounds never really heal, he guessed, and he would’ve felt the sting of their defeat even from beyond the grave.

 

Ben clenched his jaw, swallowed thickly. “I didn’t want the General in you to be upset.”

 

Anger flared, a smoldering flame flicking back to life in his core. Armitage pushed Ben’s hands off him, standing up in a manner fueled purely by anger instead of bodily strength. “The General in me is  _ dead _ , Ben,” he sneered, mouth hot as though he were spitting fire instead of an angry rant. He hated having to remind Ben who he was now, he hated having to remind  _ himself _ who he was. He hated having to forcibly separate himself from who was before and who he was today, and above all, he  _ hated having this conversation with every fiber of his being _ . “He’s dead to me, and to you, but not to your precious Resistance. I’m still the stuff of nightmares to them - can’t you see that? This bargaining plan of yours will never work. They’ll let you walk right back into their open arms, no hang-ups, no consequences, but they’ll lock me up before you can even blink. I’d sooner die than hand myself over so foolishly.”

 

Armitage - or maybe the anger and news of the FO’s defeat turned him back into Hux, he didn’t even know if there was much of a difference anymore - stood there, body aching and cold, staring down at Ben and waiting for him to say something. When he didn’t, Armitage turned and left.

 

He shut the door behind him with a bang. Ben didn’t follow him in. 

 

\-----

 

“So, what else have you kept from me?”

 

Ben looked over at him. It was late, and they were in bed; Armitage, reading something old and fictional on a junky datapad, and Ben absently picking at the calluses on his hands. After their spat, Armitage had heard through the walls the familiar sound of a saber cleaving its way through metal and plasteel, coupled with Ben’s enraged shrieking as he dismembered a nameless, brainless object. He didn’t need to glance out the window to see the carnage - the smoky smell told him well enough that the entire housing unit next to theirs was now a burning pile of ruins. Armitage almost called him  _ Ren _ when he finally came inside, thinking it morbidly funny how a little tension brought out the parts of them they'd become convinced didn't exist anymore.

 

It was the first time they’d spoken in hours, so Ben, shocked, said, “What?”

 

“You kept the Resistance all but winning the war from me,” Armitage quipped, noticing how much he sounded like  _ General Hux _ when he expressed his disappointment. When he was this upset, though, he couldn’t bring himself to care. “But that can’t be the only reason you want to return to them, much less the most important one. So, what is it really?”

 

Ben rubbed at the back of his neck, pointedly looking away. Armitage caught a glimpse of the dark spot in the low light - he couldn’t tell if it looked even bigger, or if it was just a trick of the shadows.

 

“It’s nothing,” was all Ben said for the rest of the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, give me a follow over on tumblr (@begforyourmercy) to stay updated on my writing projects, and just to talk about our favorite gays in space :)


	10. Chapter Ten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING to all readers: this chapter has somewhat graphic imagery and descriptions toward the end. lots of mentions of blood and implied sexual assault, so please, be careful reading. i kept just the bare bones of it, nothing too horrific, but it is still there, so please proceed with caution.
> 
> i apologize in advance for breaking your hearts - but all will be better when i write the sequel, coming early 2019. I will be taking a little time off of this series to write some AU and short fics, but i promise you, I will return to finish this one.
> 
> and of course, thank you so much for coming along with me on this journey. i love you all, and i hope you enjoyed this brief look into ben and armie's love story as much as i do. 
> 
> \- mercy <3

“They’d kill me.”

 

“They wouldn’t kill you,” Ben mumbled from where he lay on the floor.

 

“Life in prison, then. Sounds delightful.”

 

It was three in the morning, standard planetside time. Armitage couldn’t sleep, so by default, neither could Ben. While one rambled on and on into the wee hours of the morning, the other listened intently, though it wasn’t as if he had much of a choice. Armitage had kicked him off the bed the second he’d started snoring mid-conversation.

 

Ben yawned loudly and quite pointedly. “I wouldn’t let that happen.”

 

“How could you fix that?”

 

“Resistance holds trials... I could testify.”

 

A loud scoff rang out. “Ah, yes,” Armitage mocked, arms crossed bitterly over his chest, “I’m sure you’d do a wonderful job bargaining for my freedom. What would you even say to convince them otherwise? That - that I’d do some good in the community, help out the war efforts in exchange for not dying in a cell?”

 

“Maybe.”

 

“Well, I won’t have it. I would never help them. I’d sooner die.”

 

A soft, defeated sigh. “Die, then.”

 

Armitage grabbed the pillow from behind his head and threw it at Ben. He heard it connect somewhere with a soft, muffled  _ oof _ . The pillow was tossed back up at him, much less maliciously, a moment later. “Armie, I’m tired. Are we done now?” Ben asked.

 

Armie chewed the inside of his cheek. “Perhaps,” he mumbled. “Perhaps not.”

 

A dark mess of curly black hair popped up over the edge of the bed; dark, tired eyes peered up at Armitage, pleading. “What?” he snipped. “Why are you giving me that look?”

 

“Can I come back up on the bed now?”

 

Cold silence followed as Armie ignored him.

 

“Are you going to make me beg?”

 

“... Maybe.”

 

A heavy sigh. “Armitage... My dearest lover... Can I  _ please _ come back up on the bed?”

 

A pause, then the sound of blankets shifting as Armitage made room for Ben to lie down. Ben slowly hauled himself up, pausing to smear his mouth across Armie’s cheek in a half-awake goodnight kiss before he flopped down on his belly onto the bed. “Thank you,” Ben mumbled into his pillow. “And no one’s going to kill you tonight, so please - shut up and go to sleep.”

\----

 

“Does the Resistance have torture methods?”

 

Ben lowered the cup of caf slowly from his mouth to stare as Armitage, sitting on the counter, bit his nails anxiously. “You’re fixating awfully hard on this,” Ben deadpanned. “Just don’t worry about it, okay?”

 

“You didn’t answer the question,” Armitage fired back.

 

“ _Don’t_ _worry about it_ ,” Ben snapped, a little louder and sharper. Armitage visibly jumped. Noticing this, Ben sighed apologetically, then added a little softer, “Whatever happens when we go to them, I’m going to handle it. So just - stop worrying.”

 

He plodded out of the kitchen, caf in hand. Armitage followed him through the little hallway into the tiny plain living room, watching the strange slump of his shoulders and the slowness of his gait as Armie trailed meekly behind him. Ben had been agitated for days - sullen and brooding and grey, something that was so unlike  _ Ben _ but very much like  _ Kylo Ren _ \- but whatever was bothering him, he hadn’t spoken up about it. 

 

Once Ben had settled down on the couch, Armie crept up behind him, watching him carefully. “Are you feeling alright?” He asked softly, tipping Ben’s head back until he was looking at him from an upside-down angle. Big brown eyes stared into narrowed green, unblinking in earnesty. In the days it took him to recover, Armitage’s worst fear was Ben catching whatever strain of virus he’d come down with; though Ben was much stronger and fitted for survival than Armitage, a sickness like that had the possibility to deliver even the strongest of men to death’s door. He’d nearly lost his own life because of it; he couldn’t live with himself if Ben had been exposed and suffered the direst of fates. So far, he had shown no sign of even feeling slightly under the weather - that was, until now. 

 

Armitage rested a hand on Ben’s forehead for a heartbeat; when he took it away, he ducked his face down, pressing his cheek against Ben’s forehead. It was alarmingly warm to the touch. “I’m fine, dear,” Ben said when Armitage pulled away, reading the concern and thinly-veiled alarm in his eyes. Armitage didn’t answer, still too preoccupied by his own troubled thoughts; he gingerly raked his thin fingers through Ben’s inky curls, letting his nails graze the scalp and pulling tangles out of the smooth coils as he traveled down Ben’s head. Ben sighed, relaxing into his touch and letting his eyes drift closed. The ghost of a smile touched his lips.

 

As he neared Ben’s nape, Armie gently tipped Ben’s head up and lifted the long tendrils of hair away. That big angry black spot was still there on the back of his neck, round as a blaster button and twice as large - little inky lines stemmed from it, like blackened veins, and the surrounding skin looked bruised and tender. It stared at him like an unblinking, unfeeling eye; he stared back, nerves tingling with rising anxiety and the unexplainable premonition of something quite horrid about to happen. 

 

It didn’t take long for Ben to catch on. “I’m  _ fine _ ,” Ben reassured, pulling out of Hux’s touch and smoothing his long curls back down over the spot on his neck. Every time Armie drew attention to it - peeking slyly to see if it had grown or darkened anymore, or asking him if it was hurting when Ben continuously rubbed at his neck as if to soothe it - he instantly became ten times more adamant about keeping it hidden. “I’d be a lot better if you’d just trust me on this. When we go to the Resistance -”

 

“ _ If _ ,” Armitage butted in, “ _ If _ we go to the Resistance. I haven’t agreed yet.”

 

Ben rolled his eyes, but conceded with a wave of his hand. “Alright.  _ If _ we go to the Resistance, I’ll handle it.”

 

“You know, I might believe you,” Armie said, with a light tug on the ends of Ben’s hair as he walked around the sofa to sit next to him, “but you’ve yet to explain  _ how _ .”

 

Ben lifted up an arm, tempting Armie to curl up close against his side; he wanted to be mad at his lover, he really did, but there was something undeniable about his warmth and fondness that made it hard to resist all but throwing himself into Ben’s arms. With a sigh, Armie crawled across the sofa and tucked himself up against Ben’s side; Ben slung his arm around him, arm tight around his slim waist. Ben, however sullen he had been only moments before, began to press his lips into Armie’s hair all over his head, showering him with light kisses that made laughter bubble up stubbornly in Armie’s chest. “Tell you what,” Ben said, his words half-kissed into Armitage’s hair, “I’ll give you a week to think about it. If you don’t give me an answer before then, we’re going.”

 

Armitage didn’t argue. He leaned into another one of Ben’s head kisses, the feelings of being warm and loved finally starting to outweigh his anxiety. 

 

\-----

 

Days passed inside the little house. Quiet, cozy mornings were spent in bed as the air outside grew colder, and Ben’s skin against Armitage’s fingertips grew hotter; afternoons bled into evenings in a similar fashion, broken up only by meals and showers and the occasional interval of slow, careful lovemaking. Tangled up in one another, skin on skin again, the two men stayed steady on their newly-formed routine: Ben slept, Armitage worried. 

 

It was late afternoon, and Ben had grown too still in his slumber. Armitage gently shook him awake, watching his pliant form suddenly stiffen with awareness.

 

“I’m alright,” Ben whispered automatically, mouth pressing gently against Armitage’s lips. “Don’t worry about me.”

 

“I’d be a fool not to,” Armitage whispered back. 

 

Ben curled around Armitage, foreheads bumping together softly. His skin radiated heat, but its intensity never burned hot enough to match the fury that Armitage’s had been, which was a relief to them both. Armitage himself felt warm and shaky, but his was the product of panic slowly building inside his veins every time Ben’s fever crept even the slightest of increments higher. 

 

“We could go now,” Ben whispered in between slow, even breaths. “To the Resistance.”

 

Armitage willed his hands not to shake at the mere thought, as well resisted the urge to roll his eyes - equal parts afraid and amused. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you,” he murmured while trying for a grin, fingers tangling in Ben’s hair. His mouth kissed a line up the bridge of Ben’s nose, lips barely grazing the skin.

 

“Mhm,” Ben hummed, eyes shut but mouth curving into a contented smile. “If I really am sick, then they’d be able to heal me. You should like that, since you’re so worried.”

 

Armitage’s chest panged, an ache shooting through him that was reminiscent of feeling the booms of Starkiller explode - only this pain, he knew came from somewhere within him. Maybe it was his heart giving way, crushed and breaking under the weight of seeing the one he loved so tenderly in agony. Maybe he was feeling Ben’s sickness and hurt through the Force. He didn’t know what it was for sure, or where it came from - only that it was harder to bear than any physical pain he’d ever dealt with before this very moment. The  _ Finalizer _ could drop out of space and land on top of him, and he’d choose that over seeing Ben like this ever again. 

 

He kissed Ben once, ever so lightly, on the lips. Ben, already sinking back into sleep, didn’t push back.

 

“You gave me a week,” Armie whispered. “I’m using it.”

 

He could only pray that Ben would make it that long. 

  
  


\-----

 

Night fell earlier with each passing day, and the drizzle of rain turned to ice. 

 

It was one night before the week deadline Ben had set for him. Throughout the past days, Ben had not gotten any worse, but he hadn’t gotten any better either - a concerning predicament that left both of them dumbfounded as to what their next move should be. By most accounts, Ben was fine: he was simply drained of energy, leaving him tired and irritable and feverish at all hours of the day. But Armitage still saw trouble on the horizon, still feared it getting worse in the coming days, and it had everything to do with that strange mark on the back of his neck. Ben didn’t want to talk about it; pretended that it wasn’t there, even. But with each passing day he insisted they pack their bags and run to the Resistance as soon as they could. Armitage wouldn’t, but was beginning to think Ben knew something that he wasn’t telling him. Something he was too afraid to say out loud. 

 

So they would wait, at least until the morning. Ben slept, Armitage worried. 

 

The snow falling outside the window cast shimmering shadows across the dim room. Ben was asleep, turned over on his side away toward the wall; Armitage, awake and distressed, lay half-sitting up beside him, absently rubbing up and down Ben’s spine with the back of his hand. Something had him on edge more than just his normal anxious brain - an invisible clock was ticking its way down to zero, leading up to some mysterious cataclysm he wasn’t quite privy to. 

 

Maybe it was the snow; unfamiliar weather always made him feel strange. Maybe it was the sudden change about to take place when the sun rose - turning themselves over the Resistance, hoping for mercy when their previous selves had shown the rebels anything but. Maybe it was the heat of Ben’s skin against his knuckles, too warm for his liking but still not quite warm enough for concern.

 

Or maybe it was the sudden commotion of noise outside, mechanical instead of natural. Armie’s ears pricked up, old memories of the familiar-yet-unclear sounds causing his stomach to turn. 

 

The distinct sound of ships landing was his cue to bolt out of bed.

 

Armitage hurried to the window, peeling back a grey curtain the slightest amount to see what sudden intruder lay outside the walls. Small, sleek black ships were landing all about the yard, throwing up flurries of settled snow like a smokescreen, engines screaming their arrivals into the howling night wind. With a dawning realization that hit him all at once - a swift kick to the proverbial ribs - Armitage recognized the starburst insignia, blazing red as fire, on the side of the vehicles. 

 

After nearly a year, the First Order had finally come to call. 

 

“Those aren’t Resistance,” he said darkly, turning to morosely meet Ben’s gaze. Ben, already out of bed and on high alert, stood with balled fists and a clenched jaw. “We have to leave,  _ now _ .”

 

“If we go now, they’ll see us,” Ben replied, tone just as unnerved. “They’ve probably already seen the shuttle.”

 

“Then what do we do?” Armie nearly pleaded, mind edging off the cliffs into a sea of panic.

 

But Ben didn’t get the chance to answer before a loud  _ boom _ filled the air.

 

The little house rocked unsteadily as the far end of it was blown out, blast fire shredding through the sturdy walls as if they were nothing but slips of paper. Armitage fell to his knees and scrambled half beneath the bed frame, screams of terror stoppered up in his throat by the sheer shock that this was really happening, that this wasn’t some deep-buried nightmare of his subconscious come to life. They had avoided the First Order for so long; they had been so  _ careful _ , even willingly crossing paths with the Resistance far before they would dare go anywhere near their former allegiance. How had they been found, and why now? 

 

After what felt like an eternity, the violent barrage of blaster fire finally quieted. There was a slight pause, just long enough for the two men to see that neither of them were hurt, just shaken, before a cacophony of  rough shouts and rubble being kicked over replaced it. From across the room, where Ben was crouched beside the doorframe, he met Armitage’s gaze and mouthed a single word:  _ stormtroopers _ . As if on cue, Armitage heard the crackle of a trooper comm system, and the sharp cry of: “Intruders! Show yourselves!”

 

Neither of the men moved. Ben glanced around the room, scanning for Armie’s blaster or his own lightsaber; when he met Armie’s gaze again, he deflated as Armie shook his head, mouthed  _ no,  _ and pointed a shaky finger toward the front of the house. Both of their weapons were out of reach, lying out where the troopers had already breached and were waiting for them, guns at the ready.

 

When no answer came, the pounding of a single trooper’s feet thundered down the hall. The whole house shook as they approached, and Armitage could do nothing but freeze in place, eyes locked on Ben in hopes that if this was the last thing he’d ever live to see, at least it would be something he loved. Ben tensed, crouched low as if to strike, but looked about as hopeless and distraught as Armie felt. 

 

The trooper slowed, right outside the door, but not in view. Ben flattened himself against the wall, trying to will himself invisible; Armie ducked low, praying to some unknown deity for protection at best, and at worst, some scrap of forgiveness in the next life.

 

The trooper rounded the corner, stormed in the room. Armie could see his boots only - saw that he was looking straight ahead, not seeing either of them, but it was only a matter of time before he did.

 

The trooper turned to the left, meeting Ben at close range.

 

“Intrude-”

 

The trooper flew through the room, hit the wall nearest to Armitage with a nauseating  _ crunch _ , and then crumpled to the floor, lifeless. When Armie looked up, Ben was no longer crouched, but had sprung to his feet and was stood with his arms outstretched, though he got the strange sense that Ben’s hands had never made contact with the soldier. The air was charged with a strange energy - a  _ force _ , shaking the very oxygen particles around them. 

 

They both released their breath, relieved, until they realized what Ben had just done.

 

“Ben, you -” Armie gasped, hands covering his mouth to keep from crying out loud in shock. He couldn’t even spit the words out, so devastating to them both they were:  _ you used the Force _ .

 

Ben stared at him, eyes wide as moons. His mouth hung agape, but he couldn’t speak. He looked down at his hands, watched them tremble and shake as if they were anyone’s but his own. 

 

For a heartbeat, nothing happened. 

 

Ben stood, paralyzed and lost, looking from his hands to Armie with an awful sense of expectation: feeling the bad thing about to happen, but not knowing when it would hit and how hard.

 

“Ben?” Armitage asked softly, fear filling the empty cavities of his body. “Are you alright?”

 

And then, Ben’s eyes went cold and dark and unfocused; he stared into space, empty.

 

His panicked breathing ground to a halt.

 

“Ben?” Armie asked again, even quieter.

 

Ben did not answer. His fists were balled at his sides, so tight his knuckles threatened to tear through his pale skin. His glassed-over eyes stared off somewhere into the middle distance, not here, but somewhere impossibly far away. Every muscle in his body was pulled taut, straining against some invisible tension that made his veins pop and skin flush. With great horror, Armitage watched in slow motion as the skin around his neck grew darker and darker, bruising and blackening all the way up his throat and down to his collarbone. The black spot was consuming him, swallowing him whole as it curled around his neck and licked its way up over the cut of his jaw - taking over, taking control. 

 

Armitage watched as Ben disappeared, and something new, yet sickeningly familiar, slipped into place. Those glassy eyes rolled until they met his gaze.

 

“Ben is gone,” came a growl from deep in Ben’s chest, but the source of it was millions of lightyears away. Snoke - their former Supreme Leader, who had abandoned them and believed them to be removed from existence - looked at Armitage with Ben’s eyes, and twisted that sweet mouth into the cruelest of smiles. 

 

This was what he had feared all along, Armitage realized. The sickness he had been dreading passing on to Ben wasn’t really a sickness, but a terrible curse - the curse of the bad thing they thought they’d outrun coming back for them at full force. A beast from their past, not dead like they thought they’d left it, but only momentarily dazed, and waiting in the shadows ever since it had gained its bearings once more.  _ Of course _ Snoke hadn’t thought they were dead -  _ of course _ he had known where they were this entire time, silently keeping tabs on what they were doing every moment of every day since he abandoned them. The wall could not be pulled over on someone’s eyes, not when they had the power to see right through it. Snoke had not been fooled one bit; he had simply been biding his time, waiting until the moment was absolutely right to slither back into place and take control. How very Snoke it was of him to do, and how very, very stupid it was for Armie and Ben to not expect it. 

 

“Ben,” Armitage whimpered, but Ben was long gone. The only person here was this hollow puppet of the Supreme Leader. “Ben,  _ please _ ,” he begged, though what for, even he could not say.

 

The monster wearing Ben’s face strode forward, reached out with a too-still hand.

 

Armitage felt a  _ tap  _ to his forehead. The world went black before he hit the ground.

 

\-----

 

He woke up, gasping and all alone. 

 

All he saw was black and red, fire and blood and dark spots in his vision. No Ben.

 

The chaos around him was entirely incomprehensible: what had once been their cozy little bedroom was now nothing more than a burning husk, walls scraped raw with glowing red saber marks and meager furniture askew, cleaved in half or crushed with a force entirely foreign to humankind. The air was shrouded in smoke, hanging around Armitage’s face like a cloying, static-charged cloak, unwilling to go away no matter how hard he coughed or waved it from his face. The dead body of the intruder still lay on the floor, barely distinguishable in the low light and smoke clouds, but still very much there, and very much real. Although his brain struggled to come to grips with it -  _ this is a dream, this is all in your head, this isn’t happening _ \- his body had already come to terms, writhing and twisting as pain slowly filled the empty parts of his slow-waking consciousness.

 

He remembered nothing, and everything, all at once. Fragments of moments, ripped from time and stuck to the walls of his mind like holofilm prints: screaming, fighting against too-strong hands, begging for mercy when only in the company of the merciless. So much lost time, so many hours unaccounted, but those were all he had, not knowing if any of it was true or just pain-induced hallucinations. Ben’s face taunted him in every vision that flashed before his eyes - because that was all of him that was left, all he had of his beloved. Snoke had taken the rest and locked it away in the deep darkness of oblivion. A face left to remind you that who hurt you was also being hurt.

 

Armitage tried to stand, feeling agony rip through him nearly everywhere - his throat, where that Ben-like  _ thing _ had grabbed him, his arms and legs where he had connected with the floor. The pain and sudden slick feeling between his legs left him aching to vomit, not remembering what happened there, but too horrified to try and bring it to memory. The puddle of blood left underneath him came unbidden to his brain anyway, leaving his mind screaming  _ violation violated ruined broken hurt _ on an unhinged loop. 

 

Blood was everywhere - streaked up the walls like ribbons, drooling off the ceiling in great, ghastly strings, clinging to every inch of Armitage’s exposed body and remaining strips of clothing. His fingers felt sticky with it as he hit the floor, able to only slide and crawl his way through the house, searching desperately through the smoke and mess for an exit. Blood on blood, nothing left untouched - Snoke’s love for carnage was as unchanging as the stars, it would seem. 

 

He stumbled, falling into ruined walls and shards of glass at every step, but he finally made it to the door. The frame had cracked in half upon impact of the small fleet’s guns, jamming the halfway-open door into immobility; with painful groans and bit-back whines, Armie squeezed himself through the opening and tumbled face-first onto the hard pavement. He was out of the burning house, but where to go from here, his damaged mind couldn’t even begin to fathom. He swayed, on hands and knees, spitting red and feeling utterly bereft of all hope for survival.  

 

And then he looked up and saw the shuttle. 

 

The shuttle -  _ their _ shuttle, that horrid, ugly, rickety little thing - was still in the yard, covered in a light dusting of snow, but very much unharmed and very much real. Blessedly untouched by the rage of Snoke, something the rest of the place couldn’t claim: by Ben’s hand, the band of troopers had been slain, and their sleek black fleet left in burning ruins in the wintry grass. Only one ship had left here, carrying one passenger. The rest, all damned to the deepest Sith hell. 

 

He crawled to the shuttle. Through snow, through bits of house reduced to rubble, through troopers’ bodies strewn like refuse in the yard - he hauled himself through it all, leaving a trail of crimson in the snow behind him. The shuttle door slid open with surprising ease, perhaps sensing his distress and deciding that maybe, just now wasn’t a good time for it to be a pain. Armie latched it behind him and crawled to the cockpit on all fours, wasting no time kicking the engine up until something caught and it sputtered awake. 

 

He was alive. He was safe inside a ship.

 

And he had nowhere to go.

 

Armitage sat back in the chair, allowed himself to breathe slowly through broken ribs. The plan to go to the Resistance was entirely out the window, now that Ben had vanished, leaving Armie with Snoke’s best regards of broken bones and internal trauma. If he flew off to a Rebel base, the only thing he’d find was more pain and suffering - any more of that, he simply couldn’t take. 

 

But... what choice did he have? What shot did he possess at rescuing the love of his life, without the help of some unlikely allies on the side of the light? Because  _ of course _ he was going to go after him,  _ of course _ he was going to plunge himself headfirst into a rescue mission to get Ben back. Yes, it was true that those in love never were the most careful people in the universe, that they were reckless, but it was about time that  _ carefulness _ stop being the only thing anyone was concerned with. It was time that the first thought start being about  _ importance _ , about  _ relevance _ , about  _ love _ . This first, real love - this was the most important thing he’d ever had, ever held in his own two hands and got to keep. Now that it was ripped from him, he refused to lie down and suffer, like the good little obedient soldier he used to be; now, he’d move hell, heaven, and every planet in the galaxy to get that love back. Damn Snoke, damn dark and light - this was all he had left, and nothing could keep him away. Nothing else mattered but this love, because this love had saved him.  _ Ben _ had saved him, so he had to do the same. 

 

He was going to the Resistance, Armie decided. But he had to let them know he was coming.

 

He reached for the shuttle’s comm and hit the switch.

 

The radio comm crackled, a symphony of static, before flaring to life. Before he could lose his nerve, he punched in a frequency he remembered to be favored by the Resistance - one he recalled, from his days aboard the  _ Finalizer _ , Leia Organa herself personally sent out codes on. The Resistance General would have no compassion for Armitage himself, but all he had to do was say Ben’s name - that was all it would take to gain her favor, he was certain of it.

 

When the frequency stabilized, Armie lifted the comm mic to bloodied lips. “This is Armi-” he shook his head, clearing himself of Armitage for the time being; they wouldn’t know  _ Armitage _ , but they sure as hells would know  _ Hux _ , so Hux was who he had to be. “This is General Hux. Formerly of the First Order. I have - I have an urgent message for General Leia Organa of the Resistance.”  _ Hux _ swallowed thickly, watching out the window as the little house continued to crumble into nothingness. As plumes of black smoke and licks of flames began to engulf the structure, the lightest of snowfall began to drift down from the heavens - light and dark in one catastrophic heap; his life, captured in one scene. 

 

Hux said, voice trembling, “I’m alive. I’m surrendering. And… And Leia, I need your help.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hit me up on tumblr (@begforyourmercy) if you wanna rant at me for this cliffhanger of an ending! i'll listen to whatever you have to say. as always, i'm down for talking about my space gays anytime, anywhere, so don't be shy :)

**Author's Note:**

> comments are much appreciated, as well as a tumblr follow (@begforyourmercy) to help support my art :)


End file.
